worn out civic hx

[brucepick]

98hxman, I drove a '97 HX for about 5 years. Had a lot of fun with it.

I never cleaned out the egr manifold on it and wish I had. When it's even partly clogged it makes it really hard to hold car in lean burn. If you didn't already clean it, be sure you do that while you have things apart. It's on the back side of the engine. On the HX I'm told its below the injectors so you have to pull them to get to the egr manifold. You can count on it being mucked up, unless you cleaned it yourself. Good to clean the egr valve too of course.

[98hxman]

i have cleand the egr system and plan to when i swop the manifold to the new engine

[Xist]

Have you noticed any difference after cleaning the EGR?

[98hxman]

the check engine light went out. other than that not really its to far gone to see any gane the car will not even hold lean burn at this point

[Chrysler kid]

My red hx is worn out as well. It's getting 32mpg city, I've never gotten that low in an HX ever. My black car will get 38mpg without sleenizing but it's a low mileage car

I'm not even going to bother with compression testing my red car, probably going to be low too. one thing I am going to change however is the catalytic converter. I'm not getting a check engine light however it has a gas stench out of the tail pipe.

I mention that because I can tell you re used the old factory 300k mile catalytic converter. New cats are 2 pieces compared to the factory one piece

Cheers



The clear cam cover holds up pretty well over time. It gets a little dirty after a while but no yellowing or anything





My red car is at 242k miles and has a very noticeable lack of power compared to my 159k mile black hx, which should not be the case since I have tons of new parts on my red car. Which leads me back to the poor performance of the red car.

Red is actually a California spec ecu, black is federal. Putting in a federal ecu did not increase lean burn in red, or gain any gas mileage, and the car still can't maintain lean burn.

The most likely causes for reds problems:
Clogged egr port on cylinder head disrupting egr flow, or filthy intake manifold
Poor catalyst effeciency disrupting primary oxygen sensor readings

[California98Civic]

You might try wet and dry compression tests on Red. Have you? The EGR and intake can be cleaned too, while you're at it.

[Chrysler kid]

Egr has been cleaned with no benefit other than the check engine light being gone for over 1200 miles now.

[California98Civic]

Sorry it does not seem solved yet. How do you know LB is not engaging? That CEL going off is a benefit, I'd suggest, since it is one of the things you cannot have for the ECU to allow LB at all. You're getting closer.

[Chrysler kid]

Fixed my issues staying in lean burn. My ac system pressures were messed up because of a bad expansion valve, causing my compressor to surge and cut off occasionally. Now that the compressor is functioning normally the car will stay in lean burn without any effort.

How do I know it's in lean burn, I've had 4 hx's in 3 years so it's easy to tell when you need to go from 30% throttle to 50% throttle to maintain speed. If you've ever driven a properly functioning hx on the highway it feels like you're dragging a parachute because the car takes so much throttle to stay at speed.

[98hxman]

ok so i have a update. it has been some time from the last post for me with work and the car. i have installed the new engine and trans in my car. if you guys recall this engine is a hand built d16y8 block that is the same as the d16y5 that came in the hx cars. i over bored it .50 over and bumped the compression to 9.99 to 1 from the oem 9.4 to 1. i rebuilt the head and re did almost every part of this cars engine. installed arp head studs and a block guard so i can go with a turbo in the future.im still in the set up part trying to get all the fine points set up to have it running like it shuld. best mixed mpg i have seen it 36 mpg at speeds of 60 to 70 mph with a 4.08 finle drive trans. i know it can do better lol.as of now im not doing any hypermile driving just driving day to day like i do to see what it will get as a good base line.