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I bought a one owner 99 Civic EX with 175k miles that was dealership maintained since new.
When I bought it, the dealership I got it from filled the gas tank and I took it home. There was some dark smoke coming out of the exhaust when reved fairly high, and a CEL, but seemed ok other than that and needing tires.
It sat for a few days until I got the tires replaced, and during that time a third of the tank of gas leaked out then stopped. After it stopped the CEL went off. Was still able to pull the code, P1457 evaporative emission control system leak detected. Figure it’s a hole in the gas tank.I drove it around a few miles and seemed fine though. My brother came to look at it a few days later and as we went around the block, the car just died. Pushed it back to the house, and he said it’s probably the fuel pump because the gas tank area and fuel lines look rusted/corroded, and it probably gave out after having a lot of junk go through it.
If I turn the key to on, I can hear the fuel pump turn on every time though. So I looked around and saw ETCG and ScannerDanner have videos on testing the ignition coil, so I bought a test light to do that.
Putting the test light on the spring of the coil, it lights up. Putting it very close to the spring and cranking the engine, there is no spark. Putting the light on the positive and negative leads have equal light response, but cranking on the positive stays strong while cranking on the negative has a slight flicker.
So does that mean just replace the coil, or is the ignitor bad too?
Does it seem like something else is going on as well (besides the fuel tank leaking)? My brother thinks the valve stem seals are causing the smoke.
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Replaced the ignition coil with a used but working one, and it had spark on the spring, although a weak spark. There is no spark at the plugs.
Possibly a faulty ignition switch. This is a common problem. I believe you car is under a recall for this issue. You might call the Honda dealer and provide them the VIN. If the recall has never been done before you should be able to have this done for free.
The contacts in the switch degrade to high current draw through the switch. The biggest part of the current draw is the fuel pump. With age, miles, and possibly partially clogged fuel filters the current can be even higher than normal.
Wouldn’t have a way to get it to Honda, but will check with them to see if it’s been done before or if it’s part of the recall.
My brother got a whole distributor from Pull-A-Part and it’s still doing the same thing.
He also tried changing the main relay.Looks like the distributor we got from pull a part was bad. Went back and got another one to try, and it’s running again.
It looks like there is a tsb on your vehicle with this DTC and does some weird stuff to your fuel system. I would also check for physical leaks seeing as how you lost a third of your tank. That’s a lot of fuel lol. Don’t go kablooey on us. Do you live somewhere that gets snow? Salt could corrode the solenoid that may be the likely suspect of this.
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