Ok so a few months ago my car was skipping, tachometer was moving around wildly under acceleration. It all happened after my distributor (or coil, not positive) failed. I bought a brand new, perfectly clean distributor off ebaymotors, the 97 DX ran horrible for awhile, untill finally I put my old ICM into it. Ok so the car ran fine for 2-3 months, now its skipping again, and tach is going up and down while trying to accelerate in any gear; I put a 3rd ICM into it (came out of my 94' civic) car ran fine for 1 night, now its doing the same thing once again. I'm at a loss here as to what I should do to fix this problem, my civics eating ICM's it seems and I'm a pizza delivery driver, so this is no good. It also has new plugs in it and some good new wires I put on a year ago at most.

I'm stumped, and broke guys, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

When you pull off the cap and rotor, do you see red dust, oil, or anything abnormal inside the distributor? Are all of the wire connections clean and tight to the coil and ICM? Any burn marks on either the coil or ICM? Any parts missing inside the distributor?

 

Everything's clean, present, connected properly, cap + rotor are new less than 2 months ago, and theres no debris or dust inside the cap. I'm stumped. Also I babied the car around tonight keeping the rpms between 2-3k and it didnt skip again on me. Do you know exactly which part sends the signal to the tachometer?

 

The ICM provides the tach signal through the blue wire. The only thing I can think of is that the coil is faulty and it is destroying the ICMs. Consider replacing the coil.

 

The coil is also new, the entire distributor was "new" no more than 2 months ago, it had the cap rotor, ICM, coil, all included for around 120$ from ebaymotors. The weirdest thing was, as soon as I put it on my car I started getting all these problems, I swapped out the "new" included icm with my old used one from the old distrib. and it worked problem free for a few months. After all this signs seem to be pointing to a defective distributor.

 

Ebay parts-- always a good time.

Make sure the insulator ("leak cover") is in place and in good condition. Without it sparks can jump down into the ICM/sensor area and cause all kinds of havoc.

Probably the signal from the ECU that drives the ICM is marginal. I hesitate to say new ECU but it may come to that. Check all the wiring and grounds carefully first. I assume you've checked for ECU trouble codes and found none.

Are your cap, rotor, wires also ebay parts or OEM genuine? There are a lot of wire sets out there that look great on the outside but are pure crap.

 

If it were my car I would get another distributor. I'm sure a local salvage yard would have one you could afford, plus they usually offer 30 day warranties (at least they do here in GA).

I think that Ebay distributor is probably your problem. In my experience with Hondas they like Honda parts, not cheap ones.

I had a similar issue with my '93 D15 Civic. It turned out to be the cheap coil I installed was killing my ICM. I replaced the whole thing with a junkyard one that cost me $30 and never had another problem.

Hope this helps.

 

mk378's last post is very good to, check the plug wires and all ground wires.

 

thanks for the replies guys, I'll probablly buy a new distributor, spend some more money I dont have on a slow car. I searched for hours to try and find coil on plug for the 97', but it seems a standalone ecu is the only way to go that route. So sick of distributors!!!!

 

?Not sure what you are saying here?