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A wire is broken

Tiny
LP23601
  • MEMBER
  • 1987 HONDA CIVIC
  • 340 MILES
I have an 1987 Honda Civic stationwagon, manual trany, 1.5L engine. When I was doing some clutch/transmission work I broke/cut one wire by accident. That wire is in a cable that contains 4 separate wires (four wires wrapped by plastic tape), two go to a thermosensor right beneath the distributor, one goes to a temperature gauge beneath the distributor too. The last broken one I just can figure out where it should go. I looked everything in it is radius and can't find anywhere it can attach to.

The difference now than before is that the idle is quite rough. I have to adjusted the idle, increase a lot in order to keep it at around 1500 RPM, versus 750 before. Even though the idle goes up and down quite often that some time it dies when idle. Other than that the car seems fine.

Hope someone can answer my question.
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Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 AT 2:18 AM

12 Replies

Tiny
RIVERMIKERAT
  • MECHANIC
  • 6,110 POSTS
One wire, or four were broken/cut? I've attached a schematic that should help. If not, please let me know and I'll look for another one.
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 AT 5:39 AM
Tiny
LP23601
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Thank you for the reply.
Several corrections.
1. The car has 340K miles.
2. The cable contains 5 wires instead 4. One goes to temperature gauge, two go to a thermosensor, another one goes to the oxygen sensor. The last one is cut. Looked everything within the perimeter of the wire and can't find anything.
My apologies for the error.

That wire is cut with bare copper exposed. The other end should be attached to somewhere but I can't find it. I looked oil pressure gauge and the other coolant themosensor and they are all well connected, and they are all connected by another cable anyway.

Thanks for the diagram. However it is so small that I can't read it.

Thanks much
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 AT 6:13 PM
Tiny
RIVERMIKERAT
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Can you download the image to your computer and view it with Windows Photo Viewer? Once you open it with Viewer (right click and Preview) use the zoom feature to expand it. Let me know if that doesn't work. I'll see what I can do with Photoshop to make it bigger.
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 AT 9:07 PM
Tiny
LP23601
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It was scanned in small size or low resolution so even I enlarge it I still can't see it.
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Thursday, October 27th, 2011 AT 2:10 PM
Tiny
RIVERMIKERAT
  • MECHANIC
  • 6,110 POSTS
Ok. I opened in Photoshop and can zoom to almost unlimited levels. I just doubled its size. Try that.
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Thursday, October 27th, 2011 AT 8:24 PM
Tiny
KHLOW2008
  • MECHANIC
  • 41,815 POSTS
What is the color of the wire?
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Sunday, October 30th, 2011 AT 2:24 AM
Tiny
LP23601
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It seems like my previous post got lost. I stated that I can see the diagram, but just not the text.

Attached is a picture of 5 wires.

The top one is the one that is broken. It is more like black/light brown, or black/orange.

The second one from the top goes to the oxygen sensor.

The third one goes to a temperature gauge

The fourth and the fifth one go to a thermosensor. The thermosensor has two terminals.

Thanks much.
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Monday, October 31st, 2011 AT 1:41 AM
Tiny
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  • MECHANIC
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In section B9 I see a brown and black wire that goes to the throttle angle sensor.
Section C9 one to the atmospheric pressure sensor, tying to the coolant temp sensor and pin C12 of the ECM.
D9 to the emission control box and pin c12 of the ECM.
E6 to ground, tying to an inductive pickup at the TDC position sensor and pin A14 on the ECM.
All of these also tie to the intake temperature sensor as well.

It appears that it may be a central ground wire.
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Monday, October 31st, 2011 AT 2:52 AM
Tiny
LP23601
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  • 13 POSTS
Thanks much for your reply. You are probably right. It is a ground wire. That is the reason I can't find the other end of the wire anywhere. The wire end probably had a terminal connected to a screw somewhere, then broke and fell somewhere when I was working on the transmission.

Just out of my curiosity. My car is a carburated car. You mentioned throttle angle sensor which only applies to fuel inject car, or Honda called it PGM-FI system at that time. Should we take another look?

Thanks.
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Monday, October 31st, 2011 AT 5:12 PM
Tiny
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Brown and black still shows up as ground for the carbureted 1500 and 1300 engines. Between the blue/white and white wires at one end of the Emission Control Module, which appears to be inductively tied to the O2 sensor wire.
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Monday, October 31st, 2011 AT 10:10 PM
Tiny
LP23601
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Yes, it works now. It runs as normal as it used to. I will go at least another 100K on top of 340K now.

Thanks very much.
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Sunday, November 6th, 2011 AT 7:20 PM
Tiny
RIVERMIKERAT
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My pleasure. Happy to help.
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Monday, November 7th, 2011 AT 4:00 AM

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