After we got back, a lot of stuff happened. I went to another country. Someone got married. A house was sold. Another house was expanded. A roof was cut off a pickup truck. Another car project was born. A tractor was driven. The Town Car did a skid. I accidentally started a hardware business. This post is about none of these things.
Some Australians drove the Acura for awhile, and although I'm not specifically blaming them, VTEC started acting up when the car was cold started. Sometimes it would try to rip 'TEC at idle, which - while I appreciate the car's go-get-em attitude - was not conducive to drivability.
It even stalled at one point trying to accelerate onto the highway.
Let's try replacing the VTEC solenoid screen.
This is a fairly easy job, it's just in an inconvenient location (just above the oil filter) and we had to play a little bit of extension/socket parallel parking to find the right combination of tooling to be able to back the last bolt out one click at a time. It came out!
Old gasket/strainer on the right, new gasket/strainer on the left. The mesh didn't seem that clogged, it was just oil surface tension, but the gasket was definitely bypassing. Part of it crumbled as I pulled it out of the solenoid inlet housing.
While tightening up the solenoid back onto the engine, disaster struck! The nipple broke off the oil pressure switch.
I could have used the one off my parts D16 engine (since I've already looted it for half a dozen other sensors), but figured it was probably best in this case to go buy a new one in town. Plus, I wanted a Slurpee.
Once the new one was bolted down, we gave it a brief check for leaks, and none were found.
The TSX consistently rips 'TEC when demanded, even when cold. Returning to idle when cold is still extremely rough, but I think that's probably the electronic throttle body - they're known to be a bit dicky on these cars.
