update: still waiting on the part, should be at the dealer tomorrow morning

RonJ, i've been getting 26 MPG lately and have been trying to find the cause... do you think this screwed up FITV could have been largely contributing to or even ultimately the entire cause of the low gas mileage?

 

It's quite possible. If the FITV port remains partially open when it is supposed to be closed, then the intake air would be higher than the ECU expects. This excess air would eventually be detected at the O2 sensor, causing the ECU to respond by increasing fuel to the cylinders. Therefore, the engine would continually run too rich.

 

Awesome, i can't wait until I put the new FITV on tomorrow so that I can finally get 35+ mpg again. Plus, there's pretty much no greater feeling in terms of cars than putting a brand new Honda part on your car. lol

Hmm, sometimes my car had trouble starting... It would always start, but sometimes would die after the first couple seconds of being started, and then usually it would start right up again and stay on. Sometimes I had to let it sit for a minute and then it would start right up. Do you think this could have been caused by the ECU increasing fuel and causing the engine to flood?
Strange thing is, is that it doesn't really do that anymore. It did it like a month ago for several days in a row, and stopped. Haven't had the problem since. I replaced the fuel filter back then, but the problem didn't go away instantly from changing the fuel filter. It did go away on its own though. It started having the mentioned small trouble starting right about the same time my FITV must have gone out and my idle went all funky.

 

Someone definitely should put this quote in their signature.

Speculation -- The hard start could have been due to a fault in the FITV, if it failed to open when it first began to malfunction. More recently, the FITV problem may have evolved to one of only not closing properly.

 

yea, that makes complete sense. It doesn't have the starting trouble anymore, so I'm gonna have to say that was probably the reason, as I did nothing else to resolve the issue besides replacing the fuel filter, which gained no results.
Now I can finally have closure on that not starting issue it randomly had.

 

put on the brand spankin' new FITV today, and then bled the coolant.
The idle problem instantly went away.
Thanks for all of your help

 

You must be feeling pretty good about all of your recent successful repairs and maintenance.

 

yea, it feels good accomplishing all of this. my wallet doesn't like it so much though. lol
now, the only maintenance i have left for my car is to change the timing belt, which i will be doing very soon. It's nice to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel... I've been replacing parts non-stop since I bought the car (which I knew was going to happen when I bought it... I paid only $2200 because of the problems).