jphish

For awhile now my 2000 has been having idle issues which would come and go with no real smoking guns. At first I thought it might be my VTEC Controller. Unplugged it and no change. Then I thought that it might need the good ole map whack. No change. Maybe, my throttle body was gunked up. Nope. I cleaned out my IACV hoping that this was the issue. Nope. Frustrated, I began driving it less and less. It became a shiny ornament for my garage. I even stooped as low as taking it to my local Honda dealership. They used the "It's got aftermarket parts" (VTEC Controller) excuse and said that they couldn't work on it. One year later I decide that I've had enough of the Timing Chain Tensioner "card in bicycle wheel" noise and order one of Billman's TCT's. I install it. Pretty straight forward install. Start up my car and I hear this strange noise I've never heard before. I weird grind and squeel. I immediately turn off the car thinking something had gone horribly wrong with the TCT install. Nope. Everything was good on that front. Took the Valve cover off and find that there is oil in two of my spark plug wells. Oh geez! My tube well gaskets were terribly mangled. I'm thinking OMG! What is going on? I clean out the oil and pull all of the spark plugs. While they are out I do a compression test. I get 140 across the board. I'm starting to freak out a little bit. While I'm at it let's go ahead and do a valve adjustment. Weird, they are all really close to spec. Put everything back together with new spark plugs and two new coil packs (because the other two were oil soaked) and started her back up with a friend to listen to the engine. Great! Battery's dead. We jump the battery and there is that noise again. No Check Engine Lights or anything. We start looking and the Auto Tensioner seems to be making the noise. That's weird. Pull the belt off of the tensioner and spin the pulley by hand. Turns out the pulley on the auto tensionser went bad as was causing a ton of drag on the engine. Replaced the auto tensioner and all of the weird noises and idle issues are gone. I haven't had any battery issues lately either. I think that the bad compression numbers were from the battery not being fully charged. Weird. Happy to report that she is running like new.

Moral of the story: If you are having idle issues check your Auto Tensionser.

Bad: Video of the noise- https://youtu.be/eMTUdXOfyJw
Good: After I replaced the auto tensioner- https://youtu.be/rdNlXGwmgHQ

jimreaper

Good to know thanks.

fast_eddy

Tough read, but glad you solved your issue.

tpolonyi

Thanks for sharing.