Car stalled and now won't start
 

I have a 2000 Honda Civic with 127,007 miles on it. Tonight it just stalled and then wouldn't start. I'd driven it quite a bit today and had no warning whatsoever. I came upon a car driving really slow and tapped my brakes a little hard but didn't slam on them. When I went to press the gas to get back up to speed, nothing happened and I realized the car wasn't running so was able to pull to the side of the road. I tried to restart the car and it tries to start but won't quite turn over. I don't think it's the alternator because I've been down that road in another car. This time, the battery stayed charged for the 20 minutes it took the tow truck to get there and my headlights and interior lights never dimmed. I had almost half a tank of gas in it so it wasn't out of gas. The timing belt and water pump were changed about a year ago at 121,000 miles.

Prior to this, the car was running normally with no abnormal sounds and no check engine lights or oil light or anything. I didn't have the radio on so would have heard anything abnormal. It was towed to a mechanic shop but they are closed at the moment.. In trying to find an answer, I realized that my spark plugs and wires definitely need to be changed because it's been too long, but not sure that would cause this issue. It hasn't been running sluggish or slow to start or anything like that.

Any ideas on what would make it stall on acceleration and not start back up?

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

Something failed in the distributor? Check if you're getting spark

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

121,000 miles.....Did it lose spark? The ignition coil may have failed.

Also common, main relay and ignition switch

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

Would those make it stall on acceleration?

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

Possibly, you need to start troubleshooting to figure out what happened

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

Thanks for the ideas. It's at the shop now so I'm guessing they'll do an expensive diagnostic test on it before telling me the damage. I just hope it's a simple and not too expensive fix.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

An ignition coil failure sure can, and once it's failed (in the manner I suspect), it doesn't work again.


Until someone can lay hands on the car and determine what really happened, all we can do is guess.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

I appreciate the guess though. It was just very bizarre how it happened. I do have it at the shop, but they were closed when it was dropped off so I won't know anything for sure until at least tomorrow evening. I will definitely come back and update though.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

if it's a distributor problem make sure they either rebuild it with honda parts or get a good working one from the junkyard. aftermarket distributors are crap

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

If it's only the coil that went bad, I'd only replace the coil.

Aftermarket distributors are crap.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

It was the distributor. They probably used an aftermarket distributor because I didn't see this earlier.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

see if they'll give you the old one to keep that way you can fix it and have one ready to drop in when the aftermarket fails

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

At this point, I think I'm probably going to trade it once these issues get fixed. I left the shop, drove 11 miles and the check engine light came on showing 420 catalytic converter. They cleared the code and felt like it might just be some contaminated fuel in the line from the breakdown or possibly the plugs and wires that desperately need replacing. I drove it 44 more miles and the light came back on. The shop suggested getting the plugs and wires changed and if that doesn't take care of it then using a specific fuel treatment. He said there were several things that could be causing it to throw that code and we would try them first.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

Doubt the plugs and wires would get rid of the code. I did have some luck with putting some snake oil in my gas with my gold 05. I think it was duralube extreme catalyst cleaner. Half a bottle per tank. I had been getting an intermittent p0420 prior, after those 2 tanks of gas and resetting the computer the code never came back. I think mine wasnt totally ruined so thats why the snake oil worked. Figured I'll try a $20 bottle of goop and if it works great if not well i needed to buy a cat anyways. Tried it on the girlfriend's car and it didn't work. Cat must have been too far gone, so i had to replace it on that car.

Re: Car stalled and now won't start
 

That's the route I'm going to take with it too. I figured the treatment stuff won't hurt and may actually work and $30 is a lot better than replacing the catalytic converter. I wish he'd told me the name of the stuff and I would go ahead and get it, but he didn't want me wasting money if I didn't need to. I guess I'm just spoiled because this is the first issue I've ever had with this car.