Rep Power: 0

I own a 1998 Honda Civic Dx (automatic trans.), it has over 184K miles. I decided to change the oil last Friday (7/10/15).Instead of putting 5w-30, I unknowingly put in 10w-30. My car didn’t show any signs or symptoms at first until the following Tuesday (7/14/15) when on my way to work, I started having idling problems. Once I realized that my car wasn’t acting the way it should, I pulled over at a vacant parking lot by my job and checked the fluid levels. Not only did I put in the wrong motor oil, the dipstick indicated that I added too much. So I drained the excess amount and test drove it to see if that would at least fix the problem but it only seemed to get worse. So I waited until I got off work to change the motor oil back to 5w-30. That didn’t seem to help much either. The next couple of days the idling was getting pretty worse to the point of stalling every time I came to a complete stop, and when I accelerated it would sound what seem to be backfire coming from the muffler.

This past Friday, I went to visit my buddy so he could check to see what was going on with my car, he had a diagnostic tester so we plugged it in and we got the code P-0302 “Cylinder misfire”, so we decided do a wet/dry engine compression test and while we were at it we also inspected the condition of each spark plug. Each spark plug looked good, there was good compression all around and the fuel pressure looked good. We checked the codes to see if anything would pop up but we didn’t get anything on the diagnostic tester, but when it came to starting up the car after the test was finished, it wouldn’t turn over. Now the car has a hard time keeping the RPMs above 0 without it stalling.

The next day I drove my Civic (which was stalling at nearly every light and stop sign) to a nearby tire and battery shop so that I could use their diagnostic tester to see what exactly was going on in my car. We still got misfire codes but now for cylinders 1, 3 and 4. I guess since driving my car in this condition I was running on basically one cylinder, so we decided to recheck the sparkplugs and to our discovery the tips were blackened, the distributor cap and rotor had real bad corrosion and we barely put those in this past February, the spark plug wires looked new but we weren't taking any chances, so we just went ahead and bought new spark plugs, spark plug wires and a new distributor cap and rotor. But still with everything installed there really was no difference at all and we still got misfire codes.

Next we pulled the spark plugs wires from cylinder 1 and 2 but had no effect on the rough idle and we also pulled off the fuel injector connectors while idling on cylinder 1 and 2 but those still had no effect on the rough idle.

So far, my buddy and I are stumped as of this moment as to what is wrong with my car, I apologize for the long story, but I’m trying to remember every detail out there so that it could be clear for those of you reading this, so what do you folks out there think the problem might be?

Thank you.

 
Rep Power: 209

5w/30 and 10w/30 are both 30 weight oils and the only difference is in cold climate temperatures (w for winter)..read this: http://askville.amazon.com/differenc...uestId=9577992 In short the 10w/30 oil you used is fine and definitely not the problem. How much over the fill mark on the oil dipstick did you go?.. read this: http://www.ericthecarguy.com/kunena/...il-is-that-bad

My guess is it's just a coincidence that your car is having (unrelated) troubles after the recent oil change. From the description sounds like your distributor might be the issue.
Possible the distributor's internal gasket has failed and might be leaking inside the distributor housing and effecting spark.
Other possibility is the ignition coil and/or ICM (ignitor) inside the distributor are weak or failed. Here's a fine read for you: http://troubleshootmyvehicle.com/hon...rt-condition-1

If you know someone with a 6th generation civic try swapping out your distributor with theirs for a test.

 
Rep Power: 0

Update: My buddy installed a new ignition coil since the last one was missing the spring, but guess what, when he checked the firing order of the spark plug wires, it seems that the 1st and 2nd were mixed up for some darn reason... Once the problem was corrected the problem went away and the car is working fine once again...

Isn't that something.

 
Rep Power: 209

Good to hear it was an easy fix. A simple away to avoid crossing spark plug wires is to (now that they are in correct firing order) buy an oil-based Sharpie (white or light color) and write down the correct number on the top of both ends of each plug wire. Looks a bit funny but, guarantees they are correct.

The Prestolites on mine are numbered from the factory.

 
Rep Power: 0

I have a 98 Honda Civic coupe n when I'm driving it n start shiftin gears n wen I get into 2 gear n bogs out n I go to shift into higher gears it does the same thing n will not go past 50 n the rpms stay at 4 grand n even wen I down shift it does the same thing was told different things

 
Rep Power: 0

Hello , so i just wanted to add to this i have had this same issue with my 2000 honda civic D1.6y8 V-tec , i had codes popping up like wild fire. So a diy guy that i am i get my tools out and start checking all the main ignition that had to do with the all spark. And just like everyone else i Fell into a money pit so i went ahead and changed my dizzy cap and rotor,igniter,plugs, wires,alternator,injector’s,my ignition switch, fuel filter,map sensor, fuel pressure regulator. And also dumped some sea foam in the tank to clean out anything that would be causing the misfire , so on 03/26/2020 i re did the values fixed most of the misfire except p0302 and p1399 so now with that being said tym to do a compression test on all four cylinder, I might have a bad head gasket so i will try that today.
Thank you ..

 
Rep Power: 0

Did you ever figure it out