pfurrie

Car type: 2004 Honda Civic LX
Miles: 266,000

Symptom: Car will start for about 2 to 3 seconds, then putter to a stop as if there is no fuel. The back of the car has a strong gasoline smell. When key is in the ignition position, the fuel pump can be heard running for several seconds (until it is up to pressure).

This started one day when I was leaving work to get lunch. The car started normally and I had driving about a block when the engine power died, as if there were no fuel; the problem came on suddenly. I pulled the car over and attempted to restart it, but had the problem outlined in the previous paragraph. The fuel level in the car is slightly above half a tank.

In troubleshooting, we attempted to keep the car running by spraying starting fluid in the throttle body while someone turned the car over. This did not make the car run any better... if anything, it was worse.

Connecting an ODBII reader on the car shows just one code: P0135. This suggests a problem with the upper O2 sensor. However, we've had a check engine light lit for over a year, and the O2 sensor was what was found with the reader at that time. The sensor is mounted in the exhaust manifold. The manifold has had a crack in it for some time now, which creates a throaty noise from the engine when it is revving. The crack is very near the O2 sensor, and I'd guessed that the sensor problem might be due to the presence of the crack, but I'd not confirmed. But since the car was otherwise running fine, I dismissed the possible O2 sensor failure as a non-issue.

No other ODBII codes are present.

We're scratching our heads on this. Could it be a bad O2 sensor? If so, why was the car working for so long with that O2 sensor code? Something else? Thoughts?

Slumpertcivic

Colin42

This

pfurrie

Interesting. A friend of mine suggested that as a possible problem as well.

What would cause something like that to have happened? I could get the timing belt back in time, but if I don't address the root cause, this could just spontaneously happen again. The current timing belt has approx 74K miles on it (installed at a Honda dealership with Honda parts).

Should I or would I have heard some audible indicator of the slippage when I was driving?

Slumpertcivic

pfurrie

I haven't had a chance to open up the engine, but did run across this on YouTube. The symptoms he shows in the video are *exactly* what I'm experiencing. The video is great, and he goes through all the troubleshooting steps to come up with a solid conclusion.

Spoiler: it is the timing belt off by one tooth

ezone

If you haven't already taken it apart ......Just unplug the cam sensor and see if it will run longer than 2 seconds.

If it does run then SHUT IT OFF and confirm it jumped time. Then figure out why.