bigrobnsty

The ole Acura has treated me well until the other day. Here's the chain of events....

After returning from being on vacation for a week I picked up my car from airport parking.
It had been raining here all week and there was a ton of standing water in the lot. Had to cruise through 2 good sized puddles on the way out.
While paying for my stay at the exit the car started to sputter a little and almost stalled.
I just figured a little water had gotten into the distributor cap because I was a dumbass for driving through the standing water too fast.
After getting out of the lot and giving it some gas the sputtering stopped.
Driving on the interstate and everything was fine.
Got off at an exit and after stopping at the first light when I went to go again the tranny was starting off in 2nd. So first gear was lost and/or not being down shifted to for some reason.
After stopping and turning off the car for about 15mins I went to start it.
No action from the starter.
Shifted up and down the gears to make sure it wasn't a finicky neutral safety switch. Nothing there.
Gave it a jump just to rule that out. Nothing there.
Read a thread on here where someone claimed their 1st gen would sometimes only start after they rocked it back and fourth while in park and something with the tranny would click then the car would start. Nothing there.

So what’s the relationship between losing 1st gear and the starter not being allowed to spin? Is it because the car thinks the tranny is not in the park position?

Where should I start here? Neutral safety switch? Ignition switch? what are the odds I could be looking at something dreadful within the tranny, like bad synchros?

Any info would be much appreciated!

Go90go

Hit the starter with a metal stick, or pound on the column opposite your keyhole. Pounding on it helped me before with a faulty keyswitch.

~Cheers~

bigrobnsty

I'll try getting to the starter and give it some taps, but they do a great job of getting that thing tucked deep in there on the 2.5 so it under the intake pendulum. That would be if the starter is going bad on me, which could very well be the issue, but I've never ever had an issue with the starter on this car.

By "pound on the column opposite your keyhole" do you mean the other side of the steering column? idea being that the ignition switch needs something jarred back into place? I read somewhere that the TL's, atleast the 1st gens, have ignition switches that habitually go bad. Along the same lines as the door handle springs and gear selector lights on the dash regularly going bad on these cars. Can anyone else add some validity to this?

Go90go

It's a known issue on all mid-90's Hondas (keyswitch). The gear position lights are just from driving in D4 alot, haha.

~Cheers~

bigrobnsty

Fixed it!

P1660 OBD code. A quick google revieled someone with the same issue...
http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/cars-tr...tl-210262.html

Turns out the fuse for the ECM had blown. Probably created a temp short in the system when I hit that puddle at speed. Blew the fuse, the car sat for a few weeks and dried out and now everything is back to normal after replaceing the fuse.

Thanks for the info guys!

Mandy

Cool for you! Need to keep notes on this.