Nottingham Topper/motoring article
By David Peacock, Peacock & Purvey
Honda Prelude 2.0ltr 8v (F20A4) 1997 - 2002
Some of the car's that we feature do not have the most common faults- if they did then we would soon run out of cars to write about, but they are the most interesting cars to work on since they stop boredom from setting in -just when you think you know it all another jumps out of the woodwork to stop complacency taking over. I'm sure that they are the most interesting to read about to - I love reading about the latest car model out even though ownership is totally out of reach, so in a rather different way though people like reading about weird faults even though they are not likely to experience one.
This Honda Prelude Kept breaking down intermittently despite having had everything that could be renewed changed - including the distributor, Ignition pick up coil, and ignition ECU. The car still refused to idle below 1500 RPM. We then found that the ignition Ecu was causing the intermittent cutting out, and because the price of a new one was a fairly significant proportion of the cost of the car a second hand one was fitted. We then found the reason why the Ignition Ecu had failed since a further fault emerged - the engine refused to idle below about 1500 RPM caused by the dwell on the ignition oscilloscope trace decreasing too low below this engine speed. This was found to be caused by the HT coil being the wrong type for the car and had been damaging all Ecu's fitted to the car. Renewal of the Coil for the correct one ensured that the new Ecu would continue operating without getting damaged and the car also then idled normally.
