Honda Car Forum

"Elle" <honda.lioness@earthlink.net> wrote in
news:jaRwf.6116$%W1.5972@newsread2.news.atl.earthl ink.net:

> "TeGGeR®" <tegger@tegger.c0m> wrote
>> Could be the coil too.
>>
>> How to check:
>> http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/startproblems.html#bad
>>
>> A "dwell meter" is also known as an "engine analyzer".
> Availaible
>> everywhere.
>
> AFAIC, that helps. Said "engine analyzer" is available at
> Autozone for a digital version, $80. Available at Ebay,
> bidding is at $10 at the moment for a Sears Craftsman
> (older?) version that clearly has "dwell" noted on its dial
> knob. No idea what the quality of either of these is, but if
> the guts of this isn't much more sophisticated than a
> digital multimeter, I figure one can't go too wrong with a
> cheap engine analyzer. Looks like fun, too...



They were more common in the latter days of points-and-condenser ignition.
Once you preset your points gap to .018", you then fine-tuned it by
checking the dwell angle (hence the name "dwell meter"). You might have to
close the gap up a touch or widen it to make sure the coil was getting
properly saturated.

I fried two cheap dwell meters in 1981. At that same time, I was also
unable to determine why I was suffering severe points burning in addition
to the dwell meter failures (but didn't then know the two were related). It
seems the aftermarket coil that was on the car when I bought it had been
installed upside-down. IOW, the + and - terminals had been swapped. Easily
done, since the terminals were not marked! The garage only discovered it
when they put the car on an oscilloscope as a last resort, and saw that the
sine wave was upside-down.


--
TeGGeR®

The Unofficial Honda/Acura FAQ
www.tegger.com/hondafaq/

Except when the switch goes bad it usually does not have anything to do with
the heat of the car... but rather with the jiggling of the ignition switch.
We had that too... while driving. I logged it on the NHTSA site and included
a link to a website where I and others had logged our experiences.... 6 or
so months later there was a recall.

--
KWW

"E Meyer" <epmeyer50@msn.com> wrote in message
news:BFE93D04.EBA1C%epmeyer50@msn.com...
> On 1/9/06 1:10 PM, in article
> 3dce9a39adc2e89133e2c38d304c9b9d@loc...o utautos.com,
> "wonderingsoul" <mspence312@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I have a 1992 Honda Accord and when it gets warm it cuts off.I can be
>> driving just fine down the road and it just cuts off after getting warmed
>> up of after about 8 miles or so.After that it won't start back up until I
>> let it sit for awhile ( and hour or so) and cool down I have been told
>> alot of things that it could be but no one is exactly for sure on any of
>> those. Does anybody have any suggestions?
>>
>
> This is exactly the symptom my '96 Odyssey exhibited when the ignition
> switch went bad.
>

On 1/11/06 5:45 AM, in article NYWdnXCF4edCclneRVn-pQ@comcast.com, "KWW"
<kwalker@nospamaircooled.net> wrote:

> Except when the switch goes bad it usually does not have anything to do with
> the heat of the car... but rather with the jiggling of the ignition switch.
> We had that too... while driving. I logged it on the NHTSA site and included
> a link to a website where I and others had logged our experiences.... 6 or
> so months later there was a recall.

In my experience, when the switch went bad, it had to do with the heat of
the switch, not anything else. As it got progressively worse, the stalls
happened sooner and sooner until you couldn't get it from the street to the
garage without a couple of waits and restarts. Jiggling the switch had
absolutely no effect on it with mine. You had to wait for the contacts
inside to cool down.

Its easy to check - two little Phillips screws remove it from the back of
the key cylinder, pop it open and look. Burned contacts are obvious when
you see them.