Ok so I have a gsr swap in my 96 civic HX that was swapped by the previous owner. I don't feel like he EVER had the car running with the way I purchased it I just don't see any way the motor ever ran.

I had to repair LOTS of wiring under the hood and one of those was the wiring going to the crank angle sensor, which the motor only has two wires and the engine harness has 3. After reading I found that one of those wires was just a ground and the other two for for signal so I read both manuals (one for the car and one for the motor) and wired them up from what I THINK to be correct.

The code for the crank sensor went away but I still have a P1381 code coming up and my reader says it is for CAMshaft position sensor. From everything I can tell that sensor is in the distributor but THAT specific code didn't come up till I fixed the CRANKshaft sensor. Do these tie together or could I have ruined the sensor in the distributor?

ALSO it says that it's just "intermittent" signal. NOT completely bad. All the connections are good inside the dizzy and it looks to be a BRAND new aftermarket distributor. It was PERFECTLY clean inside and out where the motor is extremely dirty and spraypainted but no paint on the dizzy.

Anyone have any insight on this situation? If anyone could read through my rambling vomit on my screen right now. Its hard for me to explain everything and I am sure I didn't cover everything.

PS vtec has not been wired up either if that could have anything to do with this.

 

1. Check the distributor cap to see if it says made Italy on the inside. Replace with a dealer unit only.

2. Check the cylinder position sensor signal using a lab scope to see if it is cutting out when the code sets.

3. Check the timing belt for being aligned correctly.

Potential Causes:
Distributor
Distributor Cap
Harness
Timing Belt
Intake Gasket

It is highly possible that the distributor cap can be causing this code or a leaking intake gasket or general vacuum leak.

 

How does the leaky intake gasket cause this???? This could DEF be the problem as the previous owner installed a skunk2 intake manifold and I can see the throttle body is missing a nut and I am almost positive he did NOt use a new gasket. I will check the cap and install a factory one this week. Also how do I use a lab scope (and what is a lab scope) to check the cps? the code comes up about 1 second after I reset it so before I could get out of the car it would already be back on.

i will check the timing belt and harness again also.

 

Any time you have a gasket leak-any of your sensor can be getting bad readings; your car computer is constantly monitoring the air to fuel ratio through your MAP/MAF, 02 sensors and adjusting timing advance accordingly. If you have extra air "sneaking" through an intake gasket leak, it leans out your engine. This can cause your engine to try to advance the timing and will eventually throw codes under load or acceleration (usually). People usually miss this and jump right into the sensor hooked to the code spit out by the check engine light.

A scope will check and make sure you have a strong signal that is not distorted. You can search youtube and google for what a good scope readout should be. I think in this case-you are looking for a regular square output, which would indicate you have a good sensor and good wiring. I would check the dizzy cap and a general check for a vacuum leak. I don't smoke, but have a cigar on hand to blow smoke around the intake with the fan temporarily unplugged (instead of the ether spraying method).

The vacuum problem also came up under identified fixes through alldata and identifix.

This is one of those problems where is most likely is NOT the sensor associated with the code...not saying is is not, just looking at the number of problem "hits" and what solved them.

 

ok I will look into it further.

Thanks again.

 

Halloween bump

 

Just because I dispise when I read all the way through a trouble thread and never find an answer

The problem was the distributor. I replaced it with a new/used Type R dizzy and the engine code went away. Thing runs great now just need a tune.

Thanks for all the help anyway. Should've just replaced it first. Was only 60 bucks shipped on ebay.

 

There are only a few things that can go wrong with a distributor-based position sensor, and most of them relate to either a bad sensor or bad wiring. Glad it's fixed.

 

I'm pretty sure Honda distributors use variable reluctance (VR) position sensors, which don't put out a square wave. VR sensors put out a single period sine wave and nothing inbetween, and the sine wave amplitude changes with the target speed (RPM in this case).

Generally anything with two wire hookup is a VR sensor, with the exception of the oddball 2-wire Hall Effect sensors. Hall Effect sensors are the position sensors that output a square wave.. VR sensors are cheap and reliable, and tend to do very well with high temps because they're just a coil of wire and a pole piece (like an electromagnet used backwards). Hall Effect sensors are semiconductor based and have different pros and cons than VR sensors for different applications.