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Old 02-19-2011, 11:17 AM   #15 (permalink)
Cd
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic View Post
Lots of potential causes and dealers are not well versed in diagnostic repairs on 18 year old cars. They seldom see anything over 10 years age. Most of what they do these days is warranty, maintenance, inspections, and brakes.

Some easy tests.

Can you push the car in neutral with the brake off. If not you may have some sticking brake calipers, which would also show some signs of heat at the wheel where the bad caliper or wheel cylinder was located.

Your mileage change is not clear to me. How many MPG were you getting before and after the cnage occured? If the difference is 21 MPG then there is something dramatically wrong like jumped timing, or a stuck fuel pressure regulator.

If the compression test OK, then I would test fuel pressure to see if the regulator is functioning properly. Even a bad O2 sensor would not cause that dramatic a drop in fuel mileage.

Being a Honda, there are probably independent repair shops in your location that are much more familiar with your car than even a factory trained dealer mechanic, that might not work on an 18 year old car more than once or twice a year, if even that much.

regards
Mech
Thanks Mech.

I'll do the rolling test, but I'm pretty sure it's not the calipers, since I coast in neutral just fine. I personally changed out the fuel pump around three years ago, but I'll research the regulator. As mentioned previous the O2 sensor is pretty much new.
the car was getting around 44 MPG a few months ago. It's now getting around 23 with the same type of driving ( mostly highway driving )
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