Customer: States She's running a little rough along with a check engine light at 29,41 Miles Hello everybody! Good day to you and welcome back! Glad you guys are here! I Know I'm super glad to be here. We are sitting in a 2000 Honda Civic with a 1.6 L 4 cylinder Customer head stated: check engine lights on and engine is running rough I Confirm both of those conditions right now. Uh what? I want to do with this car? We're going to go ahead and get it prepped to bring into the shop. We're parked in the service drive right now I Want to do one quick uh, test drive on it to make sure that there are no underlying uh symptoms or things that I'm not noticing right now and we're going to swing around the block.

Bring her back in Uh Popsy! Hood Take a look down below and see what's going on with this uh particular unit. I Have brought the scanning device along with me. We're going to go for a test drive, see how she runs under load. We're going to check for trouble code and then go from there.

So stay tuned because this is going to be a very good Honda Video wa whoo W She almost stalled. Wake up, wake up. give us some gas. There we go hings the hood.

look who that guy is. All right. let's get out on the open row ad here and see what's going on this unit. I Can feel the misfire right now even under load.

It's just like Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam It's very random. Why did did I turn that on? Look at that. Wipers are going uh I think I broke it red light. Oh yeah, those misfires are super bad.

It's got a power steering wine as well. Okay, Yep. I Feel the misfire right now while underload. It's not running well.

Look at that. check engine light is flashing That is Not okay. A flashing check engine light indicates that conditions are present that can and will cause damage to the emission system, mostly the catalytic converter. So that's telling us we have an active misfire happening right now.

It theorizes that it's sending raw fuel into the exhaust stream and that raw fuel will damage a converter very quickly. So let's go ahead and get this thing up over the bridge here. Yeah, look us, we're misfiring like crazy right now. That's not okay and power is very reduced.

It's uh, it doesn't even have enough oom fril to get up to speed to get into a good shift. All right. let's get out of this thing. Get back to the shop.

Hopefully we make it before the engine dies on us. We'll swing it inside to the light, pop the hood, and, uh, start inspecting to figure out what's going on here. Okie does. So we're hanging out at this red light, we're almost back to the workplace.

It's still misfiring something fierce. I've got the scan tool here and I'm pulling up trouble codes and look what it gave us. We got a P0301 P0303 and a P0304 that's telling us cylinders one is misfiring cylinder 3 and cylinder 4. It's probably got misfires on number two as well.

It just, uh, is not picking up on it. Waiting for my brake in traffic here? Aha, we got it. Let's ride that. Power steering is getting up a little louder, but it's got a leak, Fluid sounds air rated, and there's that active misfire again.

blinking, blinking, and now it stopped. Okay, so it seems to misfire more under a load. All right, let's get this thing into the shop. we'll get it in progress.

Uh, I'm hoping I can get this diagnosed and pulled apart fairly quickly. I'd like to get this one finished up by the end of day. It's late afternoon. We've already run, uh, a couple cars through the shop so far this morning, but I'd like to get get number three finished up because that is a productive day.

All right, we're going to leave her running just for a moment. She's still misfiring. pretty bad popping. Where's that hood popping unit at? Oh, there is.

no. the lever's broken off. Okay, and take a look. We have no hood release lever.

so I'm going to create one with some pliers. The cable's still there. Give that a tug. I don't know if it released.

Yeah, it looks like it. We've got a gap here. Looks like someone's been frying on this with a fry bar trying to get in the hood. That's not okay.

Here we go look at our little 1.6 L Oh yeah, she's just misfiring away, isn't she interesting? So one of the first things things that I can see going on here is someone has installed a clear timing cover so we can watch the cam gear spin around in circles I Don't know how useful that is, but at least we can see there's cool stuff happening inside of the engine. So our trouble codes inside told us that cylinder 1, three and four are misfiring. So why not? Let's just, uh, do some unplugging action here. No, that's definitely not okay.

See how the uh, the spark is jumping? Here you go: The spark is jumping from up high on the coils. So these coils are leaking. They're leaking electrons. That's one problem.

What I want to do is disconnect these and see if the engine fails to respond to it. That one slowed down engine speed and you can see again there's spark leaking I Don't know if the camera's picking up on it. Yep, that's a misfire. They're all misfiring.

Look at that one, that one's sparking when it shouldn't be real tough to see. So yeah, check this one here and similar situation. that one's also leaking spark. oo that's weird.

I Don't know if you guys can pick up on the audio, but watch this if. I remove this. you can hear it clicking. That's the spark jumping.

but if I pull this away I Can now hear the spark clicking under the distributor cap. Let's pull that cap off next and see what's what it's looking like. Uh, down below, we need to go up front, shut our engine down. We're going to let it cool off some and we'll pull our distributor cap off.

We'll take a look at the rotor button down below and I guess we can take a look at some other ignition components while we're there. So we've got our cylinder head here. There's our cylinder head. There's our rocker.

SL Valve cover this unit right. There is an old school style distributor. It's run off of the cam shaft. There's our cam gear on the clear cover side.

That cam shaft runs all the way through. This distributor attaches to that cam shaft. The center of it rotates. That is the Or.

This unit contains the cam shaft position sensor. It contains the ignition module designed to f and create the spark. So what I would like to do here is get this unit disconnected. Going to remove.

It looks like there's three or four bolts and I want to take a look at the rotor button inside That wasn't even very tight was it just kind of came right off. So we'll spin this guy loose. I think there's yeah one in the back right here. Let's get that guy loose.

Yeah! I think there's just three, just three bolts on this one. That's fine. that'll make it easier to remove. Okay, that one's coming loose and let's get the one up front also not very tight.

Okay I'm not taking the wires off because if I take them off I may not know what order that they go in and I'll have to go and look up that spec and all that good stuff. But I think we have enough slack here to just pull this guy apart for inspection. Sometimes you can find these are full of water and nasty business. All righty.

So taking a look inside of this distributor cap, what we need to knowe is there are four contacts for each of the spark plug wires and inside of this unit. Let's see if we we can't zoom in and get a good view. Those contacts have a fairly decent amount of corrosion built up onto it. Uh, that's definitely a contributing factor.

You guys see all that right there. I Know the lighting is kind of tough, but we do have some corrosion corrosion buildup on the contacts inside of that cap and there's a bit of erosion and some buildup on this rotor button right here as well. I Think what I want to do is uh, get that dirt off that contact. What I want to do is pull this rotor button off.

uh I think I'm going to recommend that we replace that and the cap due to the corrosion, but I'm not entirely convinced. So let us continue and we're going to pull apart some uh, other items on this vehicle. We're going to inspect the smart plugs, we're going to check the Gap and make sure we have no additional Uh issues regarding the misfire. So we have found some problem we have not found conclusively all of the problems just yet.

Okay, 5/8 in spark plug socket on the electron ratchet Don't Fall Away Get over here. Let's go ahead and dig out these spark plugs and see what we're working with in here. I'm only pulling out the one and number four plugs cuz I don't want to get wires, uh, crisscrossed and contaminated right now. It's easy to determine where they go, but if I take them all out, holy smokes, that's bad.

If I take them all out, then we can get lost a little bit. See what we've got here that's not looking the greatest? All righty here. Let's just put these up here for some easier viewing and better illumination. Hot Hot needs a spark plug? Okay, hang on here.

Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot. Stay. He guarantee it needs that plug at least. Okay, these are not looking all that great.

There is quite a bit of wear on these plugs. You can see the electrode is worn out. There's like a taper worn into it right there at the end. That's from the area where the spark was making contact with the electrode.

And we have a similar wear pattern on this one. And these things have, uh, have reached the end of their usable lifespan. I Do believe there's an issue here. Ngks: I Don't know if these are original, but they've been here for a while.

Look at all that carbon tracking on the porcelain? See that? Okay, so we'll leave these in their correct orientation or positions, rather leave them referenced. Now, check this out. Throw that guy in. We'll throw that one in Now we know where those wires go so we don't get things mixed up.

and and bass. Awards Let's pull out those other two. This is three and two that was not tight. What are we looking like on this one that's uh, similarly worn out.

Okay I don't really care for you next and a boatload of wear? Look at the gap on that. Holy Smokes Let's check that real quick hot and we're going to see where they measure out. I Believe spec is like 40,000 or something like that. Woo, look at that one we're coming up on.

look like 62,000 on that plug. We're going to keep them in order. Next one that's this. Doesn't make any sense.

Look at that one. This one's at 29,000 Okay, never seen that before. Next one, 62,000 Again, see that. and then this one here.

also 62,000 H Very interesting. Okay, well. I'm pretty sure that these being out of spec and warn to nothing along with the corrosion and whatnot inside of that cap en rotor is, uh, is not helping out this engine's running condition. The first thing we're going to need to do here is to get this rotor button out and if we take a look a little closer, we can see that there is a screw right there that holds that rotor in, but we can't seem to reach it cuz there's this plastic business here.

So what? I want to do? I'm going to go into the cabin I'm going to hit the key and bump the key over a little bit. That's going to turn the motor over some and it's going to rotate this rotor button and hopefully line up that bolt vertically with this little Notch So I can, uh, then get a screwdriver on it and pull the unit out. Is that too far? I've gone too far. Yeah.

I went way too far. Okay, how's that still way too far? Oh, and it's right back to where we started from. One more time that had it right. Is that it? Tell me that? Was it? Is that it? And yeah, got it right there.

pointing straight up. Perfect. All right. Coming in with a Philip screwdriver, we've got our screw right there on the top of this little rotor.

Let's go ahead and pull that guy out. Uh, fortunately this is a magnetic screwdriver. Not very strong, but it's a magnet. Come here, Got it? Keep that guy safe and not lose it.

Grab a hold of our rotor, slide that thing off of the shaft right there. Yeah, that's the shaft that runs straight through and attaches to the cam shaft itself. Put that guy back. uh, closer inspection.

It's not horrible, but we do have some erosion here. and I can see it visually how that kind of divots in as the spark was contacting that area and wearing the this away. So this does warrant replacement in my eyes. So we're going to order one of these.

I'm going to order a distributor cap and we're going to order some spark plugs and wires and pretty much do a maintenance tuneup on this to see if that is the cause of our misfires or not. All righty folks. x Amount of time has passed. I Have called the part store and received a replacement component.

Uh, we compare these two visually. we can see they're of similar size, dimension, shape. uh, color is different, but that's not a matter. Uh, color is meaningless.

Let's see, we've got the appropriate mounts, the area for our screw to attach, and I Do believe this is a suitable replacement rotor button. So let go ahead and slide that guy in. Feels pretty good on the shaft. We'll come in with our magnetized, partially magnetized screwdriver and drop that Fastener down in there.

Let's get this guy tight. I've also got a uh a distributor cap here, but I do not have my plugs and wires just yet. Let see Cap's coming in. So here's how we're going to do this: I left the wires on the old unit right.

This thing is oriented in One Direction because it is not circular in shape. So I will take the replacement cap and we're going to set this guy up in position and get it bolted on. Then we can transfer over the wires uh, one wire at a time so as to not confuse them and get them crisscross like that would also be bad. Get those guys tightened down.

There we go. orange ratchet coming in for the wind. Finish this off with some finger clicks. Not too tight, although there's inserts in the plastic.

See those right there little metal inserts. those are designed to keep this from being over torqued and crushing the plastic. So although it does have inserts, you can still over torque it. You can strip the threads out on the aluminum housing that is part of the actual distributor body so you don't want to tighten the the Daylights out of it.

Just make sure it's secure. click and there's the one back here on the back side turning the extension by hand cuz there's still threads to uh to run down on that bottom. Fastener Get on there please. Coming up on torque running out of threads and clicks.

There we go. That thing feels secure so let's back it up some and what we will do is one at a time. take our wires off, transfer them over from the old cap to a new cap. Okay, so the way we'll do that is we'll reference our shape and features of the cap so we can see here.

it's got this little hump thing. Hump thing is here. There's a little button thing right there. The cap has the same button, so we're going to start with the farthest away plug wire and put it in its corresponding position on the new cap.

These aren't going to stay cuz I Ordered a set of wires, but at least now we know which wire goes into which hole. Get rid of that plug it in good and we no longer have use for this. All right. As we were chatting.

set of spark plugs and wires. Shut up. So let's get these guys unboxed real quick. I Uh I Purchased Ngks One are these part number 5306 I Think see if these are the correct units and survey says wrong, not even close.

Okay, trying again. Okay, let's try this again. We've got another box of VW Ngks. These are part number 22 62s.

Let's see if one of these guys is the one that we are looking for and the survey says that is a much better looking fit than uh, the ones that it came out. Now these are a different part number because these are the OE uh copper cord plugs and somebody had put in like some aridium. Once Upon A Time Uh being a 200,000 Mi engine, I Don't think we should put in $28 per spart plug plugs, so we're just going to go with uh, the specified correct ones which are the uh, the copper cord plugs. Yes, it's kind of a downgrade, but I Don't think that the longevity downgrade of these plugs is going to overall affect the entire lifespan of this engine.

Now seeing as how these are copper plugs and not Idium or Platinums I am going to check the Gap and we're hanging out at like 42 half th right here so that's a good gap for this particular plug. Let's go ahead and get it set up Drop it Down in the Hole here. I'm going to use the electric gun to run the threads down, but I'm not going to apply a final torque with the electric tool, run it down. it's bottomed out and we can repeat with the remaining three sparking thugs.

So let's unbox these units, get rid of our little protective sheath right there. that's so they don't uh, become damaged if they are dropped in transit or in storage. and last one right there, we'll lower you down and we'll get all these guys. Tight threading threading.

Bottomed out threading, threading threading. Bottomed out last one Bottomed out torque wrench time. All righty. We are looking for 13 ftlb of torque or 18 Newton m.

There's our click. Next one. Nope. reset.

There is our click. Next one. These plugs have a, uh, a washer on them that has to be crushed. That one clicked last one.

There we go. Torque is achieved across all four spark plugs. Let's get the wires swapped out and we can restocking the engine. So what we're going to do here? We'll grab our box of uh wires.

We're going to pull the whole stack out like so and we're going to separate these longest to shortest so we'll grab the end. We've got all four of the boots and we'll start with our longest one, which is right here. We'll throw some dialectric down in there so the spark cannot Escape Go and plug this one in and we're going to follow the rout of our longest wire right here. So we'll take it off its little bracket, following it off the next bracket, and then we can disconnect it from our distributor which it wasn't really connected I just had it kind of hanging out there.

So that's our long one. Swap it over and get it snapped into position right here on the cap. There we go. Okay, that's one.

We'll grab our short one next. This is going to be our number one spark plug. We'll pull that guy off the rotor, Set that aside, grab our shorty, get that snapped into its connector on the cap right there. Good A Little bit of grease in it.

Let's get a little bit of grease in the end of that one. Snap it in. This is our next longest one right here. We'll pull this guy out, pop that unit off of the distributor cap, and extract next longest wire coming in.

Reaching back and under. Let's get this guy attached to our distributor cap. Just kind of wiggle it in until you feel the little detent snap. There we go.

More grease. Put that guy in grease on our last one, Put that guy in there, we go. and then the last one just gets connected right here and right there. Give it a bit of a wiggle.

There we go. That one's connected. so real quick. Let's take our wires and just kind of bundle them up very nicely in their, uh, little connector here.

That way they're not just, uh, flip flopping all around willy-nilly like that's good. nice and pretty. I like it. All right looking, good looking, good.

Let's go inside, hit the key and see what she does. All right. it is alive, not good shy. Let's let it warm up some.

come up the temp. We're going to continue to observe for a little while, make sure those misfires don't show up after we determine it's not going to miss by sitting here at idle. we'll take it back out on the row ad for one more test drive and see how she does. In the meantime, let's go revisit the scan tool and to see if there's any trouble codes pending.

Uh, we can go ahead and clear out what's already in there and by that time we should be ready to hit the road. Okay, back in the cabin, here're keeping an eye on our tachometer over there. I'm going to go ahead and pull out the scan tool. We're going to check on those trouble codes.

Uh, let's take a look and see if there's any additional ones that may or may not be present while it's been running. I Don't think we're going to see new ones. Yeah. Cylinder 1, 3, and four.

Okay, back out of this and we'll clear those guys out. Radio is rattling. That's fine. All right, clearing trouble codes, erasing.

We should see the check engine light go off right about me. There we go. Lights off. Good to go, so let's go ahead and power it down.

restarting the engine again and let's go back out of here and check out trouble codes one more time just to make sure nothing's pending immediately. Codes only. Na Na N waiting, waiting, Waiting Permanent Codes Nothing present, No codes? Good. That's what we want to see.

Let's go into temporary real quick and just make sure. Nope, nothing there. All right, let's get this thing out of the garage. Go for a quick test drive, and then we, uh, we should be good to go.

So far it's feeling a lot better. I Do believe we have solved the misfire issue here. We can power down our Illuminator get this guy disconnected yet again dude set you down right here reversing Z AO Honks for safety. let's back her on out looking good looking good I see nothing in the way Okie doie well I don't want to put the cart before the horse or count my chickens before they Roost or any of those things Uh, this suggest assumption is on the way.

but I think it's safe to assume that I need to do something about this power steering I Think it's safe to assume that the engine running situation is much more better than it was when we started. Uh, like I said, we're going to go out, get it up over the bridge, get it under a load, and and then see how it behaves I'm uh, I'm checking the body line where the hood is right there to make sure that hood stays closed cuz remember that cable down there was really really super tough green light. Hooray! Yeah, so far she's feeling pretty good good. Power Band No flashing check engine light Full Speed Ahead yeah that felt really good I I Think we uh, have solved the problem and the problem would have been.

It's been 100,000 miles since. uh, maintenance has taken place. Just one of those things. All right? Here's the real test: Full Speed Ahead uphill maximum load we are at Full Throttle Rear beautiful runs just like a Honda 1.6 L should.

All righty guys. this one is a success. I Have completed the repair, the symptom has been solved. It required minimal Parts uh, nothing too invasive.

It was all bolt-on stuff. It just needed a basic tune up and this thing is right back into its normal operating condition. So having said all that I do not believe I have anything more to share with you on this particular video or on this particular car at this point in time. So as always, uh I'd like to thank you guys for watching this video.

hope you enjoyed this video. uh I hope you found it to be somewhat, uh, entertaining and Moder certainly educational. If you did find it to be either of those two things, please feel free to let me know about that in the comment section down below. Do not forget to tap that like button while down there.

and most importantly, have yourselves a fantastic day. See you guys later in a video into Honda Civic into tuneup into check engine light, end of greasy fingerprints on steering wheel and a transmission hey you guys want to see something funny that's Dave Dave's in the F1 50 platinum in front of us. He's test driving his truck too. Say hi Dave bye Dave Oh he's going that way I'm going to go left and see if I can beat him.

Yeah, he's going to go up and over and make a left and then another left. I think I'm going to beat him. See what happens here I Don't know. We can't seem to get through this green light Dave Might win.

Oh look, these people are being Curtis courteous. They're not just uh, pulling out and blocking the intersection. That was cool. I think Dave's ahead of us man.

he made it over the bridge long long ago. but he's got two left turns to make and I only had the one left turn. so maybe we're going to win whole steam. Full Speed Ahead We got to win the race I Can't believe you're racing around town and customers cars.

You should get fired. I Win Dave's not here man ha Dave's not here man man. All right guys. I Think we're good here.

Back at the shop we're parking the auto going to power it down into Honda Civic Goodbye 1.6 L Honda Civic.