Honda Car Forum

I have a 1996 honda prelude with the 2.2 DOHC VTEC and a 5 speed manual, 177,000 miles on it.I was driving a day ago and shifted into 5th gear and noticed my engine had shut off. I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to restart it. The car has gas and no error codes on the ecu. It turns over but will not start. I checked the spark plugs and timing belt and they are both good. I turned the key and can hear the fuel pump run. Any ideas?

Does the camshaft turn... your timing belt will not break off... it will simply loose some of its teeth and cause your valves to be damaged... this will cause a lot of damage to your cyl head... pull the plugs and test the compression (if the Cam turns ) good luck...

You may have lost compression. Check the compression, make sure you have appropriate compression. Also something else, check your exhaust and try to smell gas. Also check your fuses, you may have blown a fuse for fuel control.

yep it sounds like a t-belt ... and you probably bent some valves by cranking it over .. sorry

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^LEARN TO READ! THE TIMING BELT IS NOT BROKEN.And it's not an old pushrod engine,even if the belt breaks it's not going to mess up the valves unless it's at high RPM's.

It could be your ignition coil. An old internal ignition coil on early to mid 90's honda's could go bad very easily due to being exposed to lots of heat. If this happens, all parts of your engine will function but you won't get a spark from the plugs and it won't ignite the fuel/air mixture. To find out if this is the problem, look at your ignition wires, follow them to your distributor cap, unscrew the three or four screws holding it in place, take it off and remove the rotor. Now unscrew the screws holding in the coil and take it out and look for damage or replace it altogether.Or perhaps check your fuse plugs, all of them, to see if anything blew. Once I was driving down a normal road and hit a bump and my whole car turned off and everything electronic shut off, here it turns out my alternator main wire was cutting into my radiator and finally shorted out when i hit the hole. I had to tape up the wire and replace a fuse, but maybe a fuse will point you in the right direction if anything is shorted.But the timing belt could be another thing. I know people have said this, but my sister was driving her 89' accord one day and while downshifting and going up an onramp, her car suddenly shut off and when she restarted it, it turned over just for a moment before shutting off again, after that, only the starter would start and nothing would ignite and it ended up being the T-belt. Sucks man

Go ahead and replace the ECU and PGMFI fuses, if the pump is good, your getting spark, then it's the injectors. Change those and see if that'll get you going again.