Hello,

I have a 97 4dr DX 146k Auto, I have had a spark knock for a while actually I think as long as I have owned the car or shortly after (got the car round 67k mi). Over time I have tried a bunch of stuff. New plugs, wires, cai, distrib cap, rotor, timing belt, retard timing. my exhaust is pretty much stock I have a 2.5in mid pipe left over from cat back exhaust, but I have factory manifold cat and muffler.

I have NGK Plug wires prob 5k miles, Bosch Platnum plugs not even a full tank of gas on them, cap and rotor maybe 10k, cold air intake (cheap ebay) 2.5k miles

My most recent attempt at getting my car to stop pinging (knocking) was seafoam. I did 2 treatments right in a row, I dumped in 50% of the can and waited 15min start and run engine, I reved round 3k-3500 till smoke was mostly clear, then let idle maybe 5mins. Then I re-seafoamed, let sit 30min restarted, reved till smoke cleared up. I let my car idle for 5min.

So...I grabbed a wrench and took off down the road, just backing out of my driveway I could hear it being like 10x's worse (pinging) so I started up the road. my motor sounded horrible, rapidly pinging all the way. I pulled over and moved the distrib back to center (from fully retard) which would advance from where it was. I drove 1/2 mile and it was worse (as expected) so pulled over and re retared my distrib as far is it would go.

Question 1) do I have to drive for a day or two to get all the seafoam burnt out of motor??

Question 2) is there any way to look at my timing belt and see if it is off a few notchs with out totally tearing apart the motor? just pull valve cover and plastic timing cover?

Question 3) If I did the belt at 101K and now i am at 146K is it ok to put it back in or should I just cough up the $$ and replace it when the motor is apart.

Question 4) Does my car even have a knock sensor?? Haynes says on D16y7 motor it doesn't have one.

I have just got used to

Thanks in advance.
Anybody wanna buy a civic???

 

OBD II always has knock sensors. Are you sure that you should have retarded the timing? Retarding the timing is prolly gonna give you a worse knock problem because you are trying to ignite the air/fuel while the pistons is still going up more so. Its kinda hard to explain.

 

Set the timing back to stock. Have you tried premium gasoline? Try a colder plug?

 

If your gonna run premium, you might as well advance the timing. However, if you advanced the timing instead of retarding it and still running regular fuel, you will definatly have some knock/ping from preignition. Preignition puts holes in pistons.

 

Not using a light, if I set my timing back to factory (I used an awl and scratched a line) it gets worse the pinging/knocking gets worse, if I advance much past that the car will barely run, actually it stalled when I tried to advance a little bit past stock.

I just filled up on reg, so I was thinking I would dump a bottle of Outlaw in the tank for right now cause I have to drive my car and I dont want to blow holes in the pistons.

I am gonna avoid driving it till I can get an appointment at the Honda dealership. I just read about the 75k-150k recall for 96-97 Hondas where I can take it in and they will put a whole pile of parts in for free to get good emissions. Good emissions must mean no pinging/knocking???

 

Called and got appointment for "emissions test". Going in monday morn, hopefully they are nice to me and take full advantage of the free parts honda will put into my car.

 

How do you set the timing without a light? You know, AutoZone will let you borrow one.