Engine Dies for 1 second, then comes back on.....

Joined: Apr 30, 2005 Posts: 4

Dear all,

I have a '97 Honda Accord LX 4cyl.. For the second time tonight, in a week, the engine and electrical system went out while driving. It then immediately came back online.....

Detailed: While driving tonight, the dash lights, radio and headlights went black (completely out). At the same time, the engine appeared to die. This happened within ONE second. Immediately, the dash lights and engine came back on and I continued driving as if nothing had happened. Might I remind you, this happened in about one second. The first time it happened, I thought I was just tired and imaged it.....

Several other things to note here. After this happened tonight, all the dash lights and everything else came back on, but I did notice the green gear shift indicator took about 3-4 seconds to re-appear. Also, after this strange event, my rear window defroster 'magically' was on.

I understand electrical problems are often hard to track down and giving so little information to a web forumn is a long shot; but has anyone ever seen this type of behavior - or might have a theroy about what happened?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any ideas.

Matt

Joined: Apr 30, 2005 Posts: 4

Ok, I've located the problem. The ground wire in the ignition switch was lose. I was able to repro this problem numerous times buy giggling the keys. Given the entire electrical system died and the engine too, it was clearly a problem within the primary ignition circuit.

Glad to know it isn't the computer, just the ignition switch Wink

Matt