Mechanical Problems & Technical Chat - restart delay

Need Help...please

I picked up a 1991 Civic for my son last Saturday. He is new to driving a manual transmission and occasionally stalls the engine when starting from a dead stop. The car will not restart immediately. You have to let it sit for abut 10-20 seconds before it will start. If you try to restart it immediately, most times, it just turns over but wont fire.

When I test drove the car earlier last week it would restart just fine. We took possession of the car Saturday morning and the previous owner said he had it in the repair shop Friday for erratic idle and not wanting to restart. The shop the guy took the car to charged him $180 and said the idle problem was a loose ECU ground wire and the restart was a bad O2 sensor. The shop only “repaired” the loose ground wire and wanted another $200 for the O2 sensor. He had all of this in writing on the repair shop work order.

Cold starts are fine. Hot/warm restarts, with the engine being off for a short time, seem to be okay.

Saturday afternoon I replaced the O2 sensor and it still doesn’t want to restart for 10-20 seconds. Any suggestions on what to look at next would be greatly appreciated. My impression is it some how is time based with something resetting?????

Thanks in advance

is the check engine light on ?

No check engine light when running.

try this:

http://techauto.tripod.com/mainrelay.htm

i just resoldered mine. did not have a solder sucker.
Would be interested if it works.
good luck

If I may ask what were the symptoms you experienced that led you to this as the fix?

I had a 91 VW Cabriolet that suffered from what is known, commonly in the VW community, as the “hot start” problem. Typically with the 80s & early 90s VW’s you turn the key and absolutely nothing happens. The engine bay would have to cool down for about an hour to hour and a half before you could restart.

never heard of that for a vw - but mine is 84.

back to honda - exactly same as yours.
would stop and turn off and if i came back to my car in a very short time -would not start. let it sit 1 to 5 minutes, it would start. and it did not do it all the time.

posted this 3 or 4 times - went to look for the post to do a cut copy and paste and could not find it. need to keep in a work processor so i do not have to keep typing it.

But i did an engine rebuild and there were 2 bad valves. when i had the car sitting up, i also went in and took the relay out. had found the link that i posted. wish that i had not done that for troubleshooting purposes. it does not do it now, but was it the relay or bacause the engine was in as bad condition as it was (?). also had somewhat bad compression in cyl #2.
could not tell if the relay was bad. just added the solder. it is very tricky to do - just make sure that you do not get any solder on the circuits next to the pins that you add solder to.
maybe you just will buy a new relay.
if you do , or do the resolder, hope that you post back in a couple of weeks the results.

I'll just buy a new relay and see what happens. Thanks for the help!

As for the VW I think it was was 85 and later years. VW put out a service bulletin for the fix.
The cause is too much heat on the starter/solenoid, being boxed in between the block and firewall and next to the exhaust manifold.
A dfferent relay installed, in a different location, with some wiring changes and the problem was gone.

ORIGINAL: colins1991civic

I'll just buy a new relay and see what happens. Thanks for the help!





don't buy a relay till you properly diagnose the problem.....

when car does not start you need to determine if it is lack of spark or fuel..

if lack of fuel,, main relay sounds like a good advice

if lack of spark ,,, could be,, coil, ignitor, rotor,

I reread the work order. It says:
“Scanned the ECM and no fault codes were stored”
“tested engine coolant temperature sensor-OK”
“O2 sensor is very lazy and not cycling properly”

I replaced the O2 sensor. Assuming the repair shop did scan the ECM wouldn’t a improperly functioning main relay / coil / igniter / rotor result in a fault code?

Thanks for your patience.

no.
none of those show up as fault codes.

just to edit: not for 1991.

only the ignitor ,,,, at times could give you a faulty code

Well....knock on wood. A new relay has been installed and haven’t had any warm engine restart problems (fingers continued to be crossed).

What a messed up location to hide the darn thing in! I didn’t figure it would be that hidden and spent about 15 minutes looking around for it before I spied some wires running to a very odd location....and sure enough all you can see is the attach hex screw in the bottom of the relay bracket.

I opened up the old relay and could see a crack around one of the ECU terminals, just like in the trouble shooting guide.

Anyway, thanks to all for the help!!!!!!!

ok, thanxs for the reply.
gawd gone hard to get to and get out - I know.
guess that is what fixed mine - although i could not see any cracks.

I just wanted to thank you again for your help!!
The problem appears to be fixed!