Magik123

well the cheapest ICM i found was 120 from NAPA and wouldnt be here till Tues. and i found a complete dizzy assembly new for 250, installed and now the car is not dieing on me (yet at least) my guess was it was the ignitor like u guys said. Anyway now i got an interesting new problem, car is idleing extreemly lean like 16.5 - 17+ and is missing alittle. Car is still running great around 14.9 - stioch and in boost its still low to mid 11:1 which seems fine. Any ideas?

stenseltizm

yeah don't buy ignition ---- at napa, or a complete dizzy new for 250. Get an OEM ignitor to put in your old dizzy, or buy an oem dizzy and swap it out.

those chinese parts are not oem honda quality

I used to pocket an ignitor and coil every time I went to the jy. There is bound to be at least one car with no hood and a shattered cap. I can easily justify pocketing electronics left out in the rain to rot.

Oscar

You can buy a new distributor from Distributor King for 160 shipped and they're quality units.

-SKUM-

oem or bust!

Smith-02

and all the loose hardware you can take, who wants rusty bolts?

Tom-Guy

There is no ICM. It is called an ignitor. All bad ignitors are intermittant. Give me one that is "bad and won't fire" and I can make it work for an unspecified period of time by chucking it in a freezer, spraying it with starting fluid or freon, waiting for a cold day. Anything that handles appreciable current (coil, ignitor, main EFI relays) and is subject to thermal cycling (that distributor gets hot and cold woith the engine) is prone to cracking solder joints. In the case of main relays you can reflow them with a 100% success rate, but it's kind of hard to reflow embedded ignitors or a coil. :P

Now. Your code 15 for the IGnition Output circuit is either valid or entirely something you caused. If it is valid then you have an electrical connction problem between ECU and ignitior, or a bad ignitor; that code is only thrown when the ECU detects there is no ignitor on the other end of the wire. That said, I'm pretty sure you caused the code... while there is no yellow/black or yellow or black wires associated with the distributor on OBD1 cars, there is a black/yellow at the 2P connector which provides the ignitor/coil with power. Remove that and crank, the ECU sees rotational information from TDC/CKP/CYP but detects no ignitor and pops a code 15. All i can recommend is you clear the codes, stop ------- with connectors, and see if you get another code. 99% of ignitor and 100% of coil failures will *not* throw any codes.


Now. Cutting off while driving down the road and breaking up during operation is a classic coil symptom. However, main relay or ignitor can also cause this but it is much less likely due to their design and the fact they do not handle high voltage like the coil does - I have seen two ignitors and three main relays do this vs 50-60 coils over the last decade.

If you go to Honda they sell an OEM ignitor for $90, walk over to Acura and the same piece brings $120. Go to the junkyard and any distributor equipped EFI Honda/Acura '88-01 will run the same ignitor.

Avoid the low quality chinese parts wholesalers like Advance, Pep Boys, Autozone, O'Reilly's for anything electrical. Chinese ignition components are junk. Also avoid the shoddy chinese remans from Distributor King - they work great on stock vehicles 90% of the time but have a 50% chance of misfire on anything pushing under 10 psi. They are in all repects inferior to 15 year old OEM components found at the junkyard.

Oscar

Interesting info. Every time I bought a distributor from Dist. King they were used for stock applications so I never had a problem with them.


I know you're anti MSD, but would replacing a bad OEM coil for an MSD Blaster 2 coil be fine? Especially if found for $20 new.

Tom-Guy

I am anti-MSD analog boxes. They make excellent coils, and their Digital series of boxes work if you are having trouble with spark past 500-550+.

MSD Blaster coil is a great way to get an inexpensive OEM-equivalent coil that's removed from the high, failure inducing temperatures of the distributor enclosure.

Magik123

I will try to pick up a stock ignitor later on but the new dizzy is working right now i think it is from distributor kings, i ran at the track Sun. and had no problems so far. The code 15 was actually thrown everytime the car died while driving after cycling the key again the cel was gone until the car died again. It was dieing every time the car would warm up. Also the Chilton manual calls it the ICM not ignitor so i was just going off of there wording. I wasnt able to diag the actual problem but do believe it was the ignitor as it was the only old internal left in the dizzy. The reason for being unable to diag is that every time i would go to test coil, ignitor they would test good and the car would start.

Tom-Guy

Not to be an ***, but I wouldn't wipe my *** with a Chilton's manual. When the factory service literature has been available for free download for almost a decade there is NO excuse to use anything else.