Rep Power: 0

Good afternoon,

My girlfriend has a 2010 Civic 1.8L EX unfortunately, she has not done a great job maintaining the car. The car does have around 120k miles on it for a frame of reference. Out of no where when leaving her job the car would not start and run,. The car cranks over perfectly and will run for a second then immediately dies. The other weird thing is this is not every time I would say it is more often then not maybe 7 out of 10 starts it will do this but the other 3 times it starts up with out any issues. Another thing when I try starting or placing the ignition into the "ON" position the dash board lights flicker on and off like crazy and I hear a loud clicking noise. Another strange thing if I start the car and it does start, when I put into reverse it'll shut off. If I start in neutral and put it into drive it is fine.

My first thought was maybe a bad battery or alternator...I checked the battery with the car off and its consistently hitting around 12.7V when turning the car on its around 14.7V. So I do not think it is either the battery or alternator.

Today I checked every single fuse in the engine bay, and the inside of car all appear fine. I changed the spark plugs / coil packs, oil + filter, air intake filter, cleaned MAF + Cleaned Throttle body. I didn't expect any of this to fix it, but it was over due for all of it. I also checked the ground from the battery to the chassis seemed fine, and the engine to the chassis seemed fine to.

Anyone have any other ideas? My friend said possibly the ignition switch but I do not see why that would cause the light show. Please help I am out of ideas!

 
Rep Power: 222

Check the battery and ground connections make sure they're clean and tight.
I had a similar thing happen with a '99, the wire going into the positive terminal was all corroded and making a poor connection. Cut the wire back and cleaned up the terminal, car started fine after that

 
Rep Power: 0

got it fixed ended up being ignition switch