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Older Civic Maintenance and Repair
Hello,
I am looking for any kind of help or suggestions that I can get. My 98 has recently been giving me problems. It looks as if the battery is going. But we have checked that and it seems to be fine. I will be driving and the whole thing will shut down [no sputtering just shuts down]. I will try to start it back up and I get nothing. It wont even turn over. The radio and the clock have reset [which is what led me to believe that it was the battery]. Once I jump start the car it works just fine. This has happened about 3 times now, and seems to happen when I am low on gas. I am not out of gas.. just on the low side. Which makes no sense. And I dont see how the two can be related, unless it is just some sort of freak accident.
Also, and I have no clue if this is part of the same problem.. I will drive my car for quite a while [ about an hour drive seems to be where this happens].. and then stop somewhere. If I get back in my car to start it up with in 15 min.. it will not start. But if I let it sit there for about 30 min or longer it will start up just fine.
Someone suggested starter for the second problem, but I have nothing on the first. I will take any suggestions that I can get [besides just taking it to the junk yard, as many have suggested already].
Thanks!!
I am looking for any kind of help or suggestions that I can get. My 98 has recently been giving me problems. It looks as if the battery is going. But we have checked that and it seems to be fine. I will be driving and the whole thing will shut down [no sputtering just shuts down]. I will try to start it back up and I get nothing. It wont even turn over. The radio and the clock have reset [which is what led me to believe that it was the battery]. Once I jump start the car it works just fine. This has happened about 3 times now, and seems to happen when I am low on gas. I am not out of gas.. just on the low side. Which makes no sense. And I dont see how the two can be related, unless it is just some sort of freak accident.
Also, and I have no clue if this is part of the same problem.. I will drive my car for quite a while [ about an hour drive seems to be where this happens].. and then stop somewhere. If I get back in my car to start it up with in 15 min.. it will not start. But if I let it sit there for about 30 min or longer it will start up just fine.
Someone suggested starter for the second problem, but I have nothing on the first. I will take any suggestions that I can get [besides just taking it to the junk yard, as many have suggested already].
Thanks!!
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other engine fail indication or any warning. My friends says this is something to do with alternator. I didn't change my fuel filter for a while. Any help will be appreciated before I take to some mechnaic. I tried
to post this question to the forum but unable to do so - so reaching you guys. This is similar to one posted by cnu_gurl any suggestion will be appreciated PLEASE HELP !!!
I was driving home from school last night and the ABS light came on. Within 2 minutes, the gauges stayed lit but they all went dead (tach to 0, speed to 0, fuel and temp to low). Then my lights went dim and started losing all kinds of power. Other system lights came on such as the airbag light, cruise control light, check engine light (cause by this point the engine started misfiring due to low electrical). I pull over to the side of the road and the car misfires to a stall. Could not get the car restarted right away. So I end up pushing it into a parking lot and let it sit for like 45 minutes while I wait for my dad. He gets there, we go outside, and the battery recovered itself enough to get the car started. We are running the car, and the battery voltage across it only reads 11.5 Volts. We turn on the lights and the ABS light turns on again and the whole sequence starts over.
Here's what we checked:
Grounding connections
Fuses
Battery
All checked out OK.
Now we thought maybe the alternator, however the battery light on the dash was the ONLY light NEVER to come on during this whole sequencing of powering down. When we got it started the battery light flickered a couple of times but went away.
Would anyone agree with me that maybe a wire to the alternator was damaged or came loose from the head gasket replacement I had done last week?
Any other suggestions as to what it could be or similar experiences?
I appreciate any help or suggestions I can get.
If it turns out to be another major problem I promise everyone this will be one of my last posts on the Honda forum at least about my own car. I will still offer suggestions to others with the knowledge I acccumulated from Hondas I owned but I will be getting rid of this car and going with another brand and NEVER step foot in another Honda dealership again.
Is it hard to repair or replace?
Does the fluid look dark or have brown streaks in it?
99 honda civic, D16Y engine(not VTEC), when I step on it, it takes long time to give the full power, for ex. from rpm 2-rpm 4 , it takes long time then when it passes rpm 4.5 it gives crazy power as if it was a VTEC , I dont have anything added on the engine, I have used all the full cleaners a man kind made,am using a 40Am battery, air filter is cleaned regularly and the del co is balanced,
Most people would say the head gasket is only blown if you start seeing white smoke coming out of the exhaust, but this was not true with my vehicle because it was not "burning" enough coolant to see an effect in the exhaust yet. I caught it in the early stages of the gasket deterioration and leaking so it was just enough to create air pockets in the cooling system and cause the overheating and the overfilled bottle. Also in the winter time I was not getting good heat output in the cabin because of all the air trapped in the system.
Surely there must be some connection between the radio and the stalling problem. What could we check!!??
Help!
Many thanks!!
Other than that, only other thing I can think of is air blockage in front of the radiator.
the speedometer is not working and sometimes the lights will flicker on the car.
What is happening?
I can only guess. I dont have a manual for the civic.
Soeed Sensor? ( for the speedometer) Lights ???
I'd take it to a professional garage and get them to give you a repair estimate. It'll cost you a minimal amount for an estimate, but it would be a really good estimate.
Had a friends son recently hit a curb with his Honda. To the untrained eye it looked like a damaged tire and wheel...and that is what they thought the damage was. After that simple repair, it wouldn't drive straight. To make a long story short, the vehicle had to be put on a frame straightener to pull it back into correct tolerances, and 4 suspension parts were found damaged and had to be replaced before the car could be aligned and it would track straight again.
another possibility: bad plug wire
(P.S. my boyfriend said to mention that I'm a cute 21 year old chick. he thought it might increase replies.)
Now that THAT is out of the way....
No spark could be wires (but usually at least one plug gets spark, tho)
No spark on ANY plug would be the ignition coil (if there is one) or the wire from the coil to the distributor.
Usually a plug/wire-caused misfire happens under load and can often be hard to find when not in gear (neutral/park isn't much load on the engine).
A quicky way to find a bad plug or wire is to see if it gets worse when you remove one wire at a time and race the engine slightly. If it gets worse, that one is OK. If it does NOT get worse, then that wire or plug is bad.
And along the lines of carbon tracking, I usually wait and do this in the dark (literally), looking for the faint blue arc or glow around the wires. Always replace all the wires if you replace any.
A clue as to why this happens after a head gasket is replaced is possibly because in doing so, the plugs and wires were removed; moving old wires tends to crack them.
good luck
Also, before the brake job and now still the brake pedal feels "soft". There's just not that normal tight feel you get when stepping on the brakes. Is this a safety issue?
What's wrong with this lock/power lock system? Is this problem expensive to fix? Should she just learn to live with it?
The noise could be the caliper pins (on disk brakes) or return springs (on drum brakes). They can stick and prevent the pads from pulling back from the surfaces properly. It could be several other things, but this is one that comes to mind.
2) The engine sometimes races when I start the car. What is usually wrong when this happens?
2) are you pressing on the gas when you start it? if so, don't. If not, at times it wil go into "high idle" (1100-1500 rpm) when it is cold. this is normal for all cars. Otherwise it should idle at 800 rpm in neutral/park.
2) No, and that's exactly what it idles at when cold.
Thanks!
It is unusual for modern transmissions to truly slip as the designs are such that the traditional components that cause it aren't used anymore. Usually when this happens the transmission fluid is very dirty, thickened or even just low. Low fluid is a common cause of transmission issues, most of which can be corrected with no longterm harm if caught soon enough.
I just recently noticed something interesting that occurs only when the car is in neutral. While sitting at stop lights or even while coasting, the RPMs will oscillate between 0 and about 1500 RPMs. I have never noticed this before.
Any suggestions as to what this might be or how serious it could be would be very useful to me.
Thanks.
sounds like it could misfiring, how's the power when accellerating? How old are the spark plugs? Plug wires?
the power when accellerating is fine. once it's in gear it doesn't act this way at all.
i'll have to check on the spark plugs and plug wires later.
My wife bought her 99 Civic LX from Carmax in 2002 with about 30K miles. About a year after buying it (and 3mo after the 36K dealer service), the A/C compressor seized up and had to be replaced. This was quite costly...
The Problem:
Starting around 3 years ago (2004 w/ ~50K mi & about a year after the A/C compressor replaced), the car began to act quite odd. Specifically when the car is just started / cold start (warm or cold weather), for about the first 10 min the engine almost wants to cut-off. Until the engine is fully warmed-up, it idles exceptionally rough and drops very low. Usually the engine will almost die out while driving a few times in the first 10 min or so. You will have your foot on the accelerator driving down the road, then suddenly the RPMs drop to below 500 and no further power is transferred to the road (almost coasting). No matter how far you press down on the gas, it just sits stupid in low idle for about 2 or 3 seconds then suddenly lurches back up. It will repeat this a few times randomly until the engine is completely warmed up. Even if you put the transmission in neutral the idle does not pickup, so it is not load related.
Once the engine completely warms up this problem goes away. Again it will do this in the middle of the summer the same as in the winter - the only difference is in the summer it does it for about 5 - 10 min & the winter about 10 - 15 min.
Taking it to a few shops has just been frustrating since I have been given a litany issues / solutions costing from $850 - $2500. Obviously going with the cheapest is not the best option and $850 isn’t chicken feed. I can’t even remember all of the “issues” identified, but with my fairly decent knowledge some were just ridiculous. At 50K the timing belt should not have been the cause, but was suggested at that time.
Changing the distributor, plugs & cables did not help, nor did having the fuel injector cleaned. Proper oil and filter changes have also been done. The car now has 80K and had this problem for about 3 years.
I am hoping someone might be aware of this issue and have some good suggestions
Thanks!