A weird one...

Just went through a sequence of emails from a guy in Georgia.

He bought a '95 V6 Accord very cheaply from the owner, who gave up on it
because he couldn't get it running.

The Georgia guy was totally stumped, so asked me for any tips I might think
of. We went through everything. There was spark, there was fuel, everything
was apparently there. But the engine would crank and not show any sign of
firing up.

One thing he never mentioned until the very end was that the engine was
blowing back through the intake, but compression was good.

Guess what was wrong?

The previous owner had installed a starter from some other vehicle that ran
BACKWARDS from the Accord's proper starter. The engine was spinning the
wrong way around when cranked.

Replacing the starter with a correct one fixed the problem with no other
changes.

How's *that* for a "gotcha"?

 

not bad! which reminds me - i must swap out the crappy bosch starter
motor on my crx...

regarding symptoms, i've seen blow-back from mis-timed cams, so it's on
my list of things to look out for. mind you, /anything/ that's been
obviously touched subsequent to factory is a potential gotcha in my
book. some of the stuff you see some "mechanics" do - blows my mind.
you couldn't teach it. the previous mechanic not comparing the old and
new starter motors and not noting the different gear bevels for instance.

 

A good one!

Another might be a A/C compressor for one of my gen2 civics. Since it
faces the engine rather than sitting along side, it revolves in the
opposite direction of a traditional compressor and I'll betcha you
cain't mix the two...

JT

 

Reminds me of a friend of mine who bought a Saab Sonnett way back when
from somebody who couldn't get his self-installed alarm system to
work. Sure enough, he'd grounded all the switches, etc. to the
fibreglass.