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Hoping somebody can help shed some light on this problem. I have a Civic DX Coupe with a D15B7 and an automatic transmission. The mileage on the car is around 278,000 miles.

Some background on it... I recently changed out the head gasket and accompanying gaskets, changed the oil, flushed/refilled/bled the coolant. The distributor has also recently been replaced. The spark plugs are brand new NGKs gapped to .044". The valves have also recently been adjusted to .008" on the intake side and .010" on the exhaust side. While the head was off the engine I also took that time to carefully clean the manifold holes, piston tops, and as far up into the intake manifold as i could using some brake cleaner. The muffler is a bit loose, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

Here's what's going on: When I initially start the car, it starts up in 1 or 2 cranks and runs beautifully (after the valve adjustment anyway). You can barely tell the thing is even running it's so quiet. When you shift the car into reverse or drive, however, the engine will bog down and sometimes even stall completely. If it stalls out, you generally have to wait about 5 minutes before you can attempt to restart it, else it'll just crank and sputter a little bit. Also, when you do restart it you sometimes have to give it a little gas to get it going. Anybody have any insight on what might be causing this? Should I start looking towards the IAC? Any info would be extremely helpful.

 
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I finally fixed this a few days ago... it ended up being... wait for it... a single cracked joint on the main relay. I resoldered the thing and haven't had any problems since. Crazy.