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Hello. New to forum and I am at wit's end. My daughter's car has been having intermittent starting problems for awhile now. Some days it would start fine. Some days not at all. It cranks but won't fire. Try again in an hour and it would start. Took it to my bro in law's shop for oil change/inspection and he kept it for 2 days and it started every single time. He looked at distributor/plugs/etc and everything looked fine. Got it home and next day it wouldn't start.

Finally found a trick to get it started. Turned key to position II and would wait to see if CEL would turn off. If it didn't it was a no go. Sometimes after a few tries the CEL would go off and you could hear hum of fuel pump. Then it would start. That worked for a little while but then we couldn't get fuel pump to kick in and could never get it to start. Bought a new main relay but it didn't solve the problem.

My bro in law came over and sprayed brake cleaner and it fired. He then rapped the fuel pump and said it should start and it did the first time so he determined it was the fuel pump. Installed new pump and it wouldn't start. No hum of fuel pump at all. Later that day I tried again and it started. Today, not at all. So its back to the beginning.

I also need to mention that she does get water inside the car when it rains and it may be coming from the moon roof. It gets wet on passenger side floor and I know that's near where the ECM is located so I wonder if this may have something to do with it.

Will someone please help me with this? It has 177,000 miles on it and we really want to run it for a while longer. Can't afford buying car now. Thanks!

 
Rep Power: 518

Pull the ECM, remove the covers, look for evidence of leaking capacitors.
Google has a zillion hits on this.

http://vtec92.wordpress.com/2009/12/...acitor-in-ecu/

http://honda-tech.com/honda-civic-de...ement-1962238/

http://madfablab.com/product_info.php?products_id=55

 
Rep Power: 0

Thanks for the response. I am going out of town tomorrow so I will look into it when i get back.

 
Rep Power: 0

OK. I finally got the ECM out and there is no visual evidence of leaking capacitors or anything else for that matter. Does that rule out the ECM being the issue? I checked the ground wires on the thermostat housing and everything seemed ok there. I am running out of ideas other than having it towed to a mechanic somewhere.

 
Rep Power: 518

No it can't rule out the ECM. I just thought maybe there would be evidence that's easy to find in there.