Problems Problems ...

[stnapycnaf]

I have a 91 CRX HF with an A6 engine swap.
When I swapped I used my HF dizzy and put it on the A6 because it came without one.

It was timed correctly. Everything was fine.
Until today.

Driving around a curve my engine started bogging out heavily and it seemed to fall to using only 1 cylinder. So I shut it off. Popped the hood and discovered burn marks on my CAI by my pos. battery terminal. Mind you I don't have a battery tie-down. I changed the plugs thinking they fouled. The plugs came out covered in black soot [running rich?] but no other damage. I started the car, it cranks just fine, it just really didnt want to and it still only ran on one cylinder.

Symptoms:
Smoking [white/greyish] out of my exhaust
Very hot negative cable
Hard to start
Running on one cyl.

My thought is that the connection of the battery and CAI caused a short and fried my dizzy. Or its just old and decided to take a shit on me.

Any input would be great ... cause I need to go to school on Monday.

Thanks,

Justin

[stnapycnaf]

UPDATE

I had my car towed home and removed the spark plugs and discovered that I wasn't burning the fuel. I checked the for spark and I do have it at the plugs. I then re-gapped the plugs correctly [they were a little close before]. I removed the dizzy cap and cleaned the terminals and reinstalled it. I cleaned off my battery terminals and snipped and primed both the pos. and negative wires.

Then I tried to start my car ... no crank. So now I'm charging my battery. My starter has sounded weak for a while now, so maybe its time to change that out. Good thing I have another one that is known to be working.

Any input or similar experience and guidance is appreciated and very welcome.

Thanks

[thefooshmeister]

did you check all your fuses?? couldve fried one when the battery touched the intake..get a little rubber protector or one of the velcro covers for your battery. i fried one of mine when my ground was loose on the alternator

[Christ]

x methinks you should check your compression... pry a long shot, but white smoke is indicative of two things... usually either your head gasket is blown, or you're SERIOUSLY not burning fuel. x

[stnapycnaf]

No dice with the starter. It won't crank at all.

HELP

[Greenblurr93]

i agree, check all your fuses.

[stnapycnaf]

I checked all of my fuses, they're fine. I did take the liberty of replacing my old corroded battery ground cable and now I'm cranking again. I'm still getting spark, its just not igniting. I figure I'm running really rich or my engine is flooded. I also discovered my #3 fuel injector has a slight leak at the fuel rail. I tried starting fluid to get it to kick, but it just caught for a split second and sputtered back to the starter cranking.

[Christ]

check compression... that's my 2 cents. couldn't hurt anything to check it.

[CRXperiment]

Screw cold air intakes to hell. You shorted something out, check your fuses/ wiring. Thank the lord that this didn't happen to you:
http://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=2060211

Although a little longer and your car would have been kentucky fried chicken.

[stnapycnaf]

jeah i definately put some electrical tape around the area where the battery contacted the intake pipe.

I'm running a compression test tomorrow ... hopefully that turns out well

[stnapycnaf]

so I ran a compression test ... and the results were awful.
As my car stands ... from the cylinder on the left to right [closest to dizzy over to the timing belt] I have:

60psi 30psi 90psi 60psi

Anybody care to enlighten me with the burden on my hands?

Thanks

*Also, my stepdad believes that my timing belt skipped [its loose] and the car was out of time when we towed it back home*

[Nick Gautreau]

Suggestion... Get it rebuilt!
(or even better yet, get a cheap SOHC 1.5L from the junkyard and put that in as a temp solution. Thats what I did with mine. (Not this Civic... I used to have a 89CivicHB))

[stnapycnaf]

well ... if it came to the point where I can't fix this without removing and replacing my engine ... I was just going to toss in another HF engine [or something similar] and build this for either turbo or mini-me

I just really dont have the time right now ... I need my car to go ... school is getting really near.

[CRXperiment]

Originally Posted by stnapycnaf

so I ran a compression test ... and the results were awful.


*Also, my stepdad believes that my timing belt skipped [its loose] and the car was out of time when we towed it back home*

Yeah that is a possibility. If your timing is off then that will yield you low compression results since the valves are opening and closing at the wrong times. Check your TDC position out at least; I'd start from there before getting a new motor, especially if it was running before.

[Christ]

check the timing belt for if it's broken, check the overall valve timing, if it jumped while it was running, it may have bent valves or put a hole in a piston... latter is less-than-likely, since you're getting any compression at all...

also, if you're throwing white smoke, it's probably either oil or water leaking into the combustion chambers... check/replace your head gasket.