Hoping that someone has experienced something like this and it's not some crazy fluke. I have a MY01 with 64k on it. The last time I drove the vehicle was Saturday, and from the start of the drive, to the moment I pulled into the parking space and turned the engine off, everything seemed normal. This morning as i started the vehicle to go to work, the idle sounded funny, which I at first attributed to the slightly cooler weather at this time of year (I am running an AEM ecu and the cold starts are sometimes a little wonky). As I started driving though, I noticed an irregular sound coming from my exhaust, sounded choppy, almost like I had an exhaust leak. As I drove and the engine warmed up, the sound didn't change. Vehicle seems to be down on power, although I didn't floor it on my way to work out of precaution, so I am leaning towards it somehow running on 3 cyl. Spark plugs were replaced by me when I bought the car 2 and a half years ago when it had 25k. Coil packs are, as far as I know, the ones the car started life with. Haven't yet had a chance to check either of those two things, just curious if anyone knows something that I don't or could point me in the right direction.


Thank you in advance

 

Hard to say...start with checking the obvious things like you mentioned - spark plugs, coil packs, oil! Did you throw a CEL at all? Check your exhaust as well - could have an issue with the CAT, thought that should have thrown a CEL as well.

 

Working from 4-230 today, so i haven't yet had a chance to check and it was dark. No CEL though as I'm not running the Honda ecu. No cat either. Decat and single q300 for the exhaust.

 

My guess is that you either have a plug or coil pack that went south. Pull your plugs and see if one of them is wet. If so, put the plugs back in the same cylinders but swap the coil pack with another cylinder. Go for a short drive (you will likely have the same problem) and recheck the plugs in those two cylinders.

If the problem switched to the other cylinder the coil pack on that cylinder needs to be replaced. If not, the wet plug is likely bad. Then you should swap plugs with another cylinder to confirm a bad plug.

If the problem remains with the same cylinder, you have a bigger problem. It could be compression, an ECU issue,, an injector or a valve issue.