S2KIP

Hi all,

Put a new map on the other day, went for a drive, all was fine. Then last night on the way to the cinema when flooring it, VTEC kicks in as normal and then as I get to around 7k rpm I can feel the car losing power, but it doesn't drop out of VTEC and I think revs are rising as normal. If I put the car in 5th at standstill and try and pull away it stalls after about a foot or so.

I'll be getting a datalog to my tuner today hopefully, I presume if it shows nothing wrong then I should suspect the clutch? The oil is fine (car never uses any so I never suspected it anyway) and it does it in the gears I've tried (1st, 2nd and 3rd). There's also no CEL lit on the dash.

Car is in for a tappet service at the start of May, just need to know if I should budget getting a new clutch at the same time, if so which brand should I go for? I doubt I'll be supercharging it but I've got a few NA mods on it now.

Cheers!

BenRNBP

I made the mistake of thinking the same as you, I was losing power at the top of the rev range that felt like a clutch slip. It turned out to be the Denso plugs were blowing (see pic) so, could it be the new map is showing weak links in the ignition components? coil packs maybe ?

S2KIP

Yeah a friend said it could be plugs as well, I'll check the history tonight but I'm pretty sure they were changed by Honda two years and less than 12,000 miles ago.

noodels

That is not blow ^^ its corona marks <not the drink> and normal

The corona, a brown deposit on the insulator, is the glow that appears above the spark plug housing around the base of the insulator. The appearance of a corona is not detrimental to the operation of the spark plug. Contrary to common belief, this condition is caused by electrical stress in the air adjacent to the insulator. Often, the corona stain is mistaken for spark plug gas leakage, but again, this does not affect spark plug performance.

S2KIP

Well it stopped doing it for a day and this morning it was back. I managed to get a datalog of it so I'll have a look and see if anythings amiss.

Mikey81

Sill question, have you tried it with traction control turned off?

S2KIP

I don't have traction control.

BenRNBP

Every day's a school day, however replacing the plugs did fix the hesitation in my case so I must have inadvertently fixed something else in doing so

fluffyninja

Noodle is correct that looks like Corona staining.
The mechanism is that any hydrocarbon vapours in the spark plug tube are drawn to the heavily charged plug body.
If it happened quickly it might be indicative of a poor seal causing oil or petrol vapours to leak into that area

S2KIP

Well it's doing it again but I have a datalog of it. All looks normal but I've mailed it to my tuner for a look.

Might book the car into a local garage to get the plugs changed, it's meant to be on the dyno in a few weeks and I want it fixed before it goes on.