Racing idle, lagging power, stalling cold...

Anyone have any guess what my car's problem is? It starts nicely and purrs at first, but if the engine hasn't warmed up the idle will plummet when braking to a stop and often stalls completely. When warm, the idle creeps back and forth between 1000 and 500 RPMs. I can see the needle swinging sharply back and forth, kinda crazy like. When it's moody like this it hesitates while accelerating from a stand still and then scoots up to speed normally as if it forgot whatever mechanical glitch was bothering it. Weird. It also idles roughly a lot of the time. I've already had one shop look at it. They told me it was the ignition coil. Three hundred dollars later with a new ignition coil, nothing has changed. What gives? Any comments? Thanks for any help.

ignition coil costs 300 bucks? you must have gone with an aftermarket unit or something, my friends for his teg was 90 bucks I think. what car/year is this?

No, the ignition coil only had a $45 price tag. The remainder of the bill was diagnostic and labor charges. My car's a '92 Accord LX automatic, by the way.

do they charge a set fee for diagnostic as well as per hour while they diagnose the problem. cuz a coil can be popped in in a matter of minutes.


maybe the IACV?

have you tried checking the codes yourself. under the dash on the pass. side, should be a 2 pin connector, usually light blue but my canadian hondas was green so who knows. jump the wires with a spere peice of wire or bailing wore or something, and turn ignition to on and read the CEL blinks, a long blink is 10 and short blinks are 1, ad em up and post what you get. if you got more than one code there is a longer pause inbetween codes adn then after last code it loops back and starts over.

I dont know them off hand and dont have a book but next person who checks might know, and theres plenty of sites that list them if you do a search

Okay, thanks for the tip. I'll try it and see what happens. Would've thought the mechanics had done that themselves, but I'm thinking they might be no good anyway. :cheers:

you can buy a kit that comes with the book that lists codes for honda, nissan, and toyota and a tool that lets you read codes from either 3 manufacturers. not sure where he got it though or where it is now.

i had a similar problem on my 2001 civic, turned out being faulty o2 sensors. dealership replaced em free though since it was still under warranty.

Funny you should mention the O2 sensors, because I was beginning to think it might be something like that. The way the r.p.m. needle races, you get the sense it's an electronic signal misfiring somewhere. If it were some major component, I think the problem would've gotten worse by now. Generally speaking the car runs fine. One other thing - I thought the trouble codes only worked if the "check engine" light came on. Is that correct? (I bought the car from a friend who lost the owner's manual, so I'm still learning about it)