electrical load causing engine strain

[earthsheartbeat]

After having my 1986 CRX Si clutch replaced I have had an electrical problem that I need help tracking down. Here are the symptoms:
Once the car is warmed up if I put my foot on the break, turn on the headlights, if the cooling fan kicks in, basically if I put any electrical load on the car the idle drops from 750 to about 600 and you can hear the engine straining with the exhaust pipe shaking. Another strange symptom is that when I'm at a stop light and I have a turn signal on you can hear the fuel pump going up and down in pitch to the beat of the signal.

I cleaned the battery and as many grounds as I could find in the engine compartment to no avail. Any ideas?

[BlueCivic83]

Danmm ..
yesterday my car got stuck on a hill doe the weet pavement and then stuck on a three on the botom of the hill someone had to toww the car out of the hill and then it was having the same symptoms has you but eveen worse it was so hard to crank it's like the engine was making alot of efforts to turn. i left it @ my house and went back on it last night it started normaly and this morning i checked my ECU and it had an electric load prob .

what i did was reset the ECU and its working fine this morning

[earthsheartbeat]

I have reset the ECU many times since this problem started to no evail. I also replaced the fuel filter. My muffler seems broken because it can rotate on the pipe and my idle boost diaphram is missing (I have air conditioning) along with the spring loaded screw that threads into the throttle arm. I thought I would give this additional information incase it rang a bell for anyone. I'm trying to avoid going under the dash to look at the wire harness but if anyone knows where the ground points are inside the dash area I would appreciate the info. Thank you.

[scrubber]

i realize this is a old old thread, but i have the same problem.

I have an 86 civic, 4 door sedan. As was said before, when there is a lot of load on the electrical system, the car's revs go down. Defroster, heater fan on high, lights, wipers; when those are on, it goes low when im idleing at a light and stuff. My mechanic said that it is because there is so much drain on the battery when all that stuff is on. I want to know if there is any solutions.

[87civicfranky]

its the alternator... correct me if im wrong but i think the civics alternator generates about 50 to 55 amps....you could ether a)buy an optima cell battery or B)try to fit in a more powerfull alternator...... i think you can fit a chevy alternaor............

[cody_vg]

You said that you replaced the clutch right well theres an important ground that is right by the clutch fork on the tranny. check that ground cuz thats happened to me too.

[cvcc_wagon]

yes, check your grounds. there are larger alternators that you can get for the later civics, my bro got one for his 89 crx, but i don't know about this gen. you might want to chat with a local alternator rebuilder to find out, or like was mentioned get a chevy one or whatever