I'm looking for ideas here. My 89 Civic is giving fits. First of all, it has just has an acceleration problem. My wife came home and said it was running rough, like the converter was plug. I found that, when in park, if you do a smooth application of throttle it revs up fine. But if you give it a shot, it will go rough and shake horrible. When driving it will be rough from take off, smooth out until it shifts, then go rough again. It will not run smoothly over about 25 mph.

So I parked it until this past weekend when I had time to mess with it.

When I finally got to it, the battery was dead. I hooked up another car for a jump and tested the wire from alt to batt and it is fine. I was also surprised to find that the brake warning light and front parking lights were on. The key was in my pocket, emergency brake was not engaged, and light switch was off. If I pull up on the emergency brake the light goes out, which is the opposite of when the key is turned on.

I don't know what is going on. We just had a cold snap with heavy freezing rains when this started. I was also informed that my son used it to give his boss a jumpstart the night before this all started.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am taking the battery to work with me to let it get a nice slow charge for about 10 hours.

I'm looking for ideas here. My 89 Civic is giving fits. First of all, it has just has an acceleration problem. My wife came home and said it was running rough, like the convertor was plug. I found that, when in park, if you do a smooth application of throttle it revs up fine. But if you give it a shot, it wil go rough and shake horrible. When driving it wil be rough from take off, smooth out until it shifts, then go rough again. It will not run smoothly over about 25 mph.

So I parked it until this past weekend when I had time to mess with it.

When I finally got to it, the battery was dead. I hooked up another car for a jump and tested the wire from alt to batt and it is fine. I was also suprised to find that the brake warning light and front parking lights were on. The key was in my pocket, emergency brake was not engaged, and light switch was off. If I pull up on the emergency brake the light goes out, which is the opposite of when the key is turned on.

I don't know what is going on. We just had a cold snap with heavy freezing rains when this started. I was also informed that my son used it to give his boss a jumpstart the night before this all started.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am taking the battery to work with me to let it get a nice slow charge for about 10 hours.
Update

I put the charged battery back in and the lights are now working correctly. I am not sure how I got I got my test light to light when I checked the alt pos output with the engine not running. I found the 60 amp fuseable link blown in the under hood fuse block. I had started the car and chased the voltage from the alt with my dmm after it read higher than the batt.

I did a temp fix on the 60 amp and took the car around the block. And it still runs rough like before. At idle the rpm's are about 800, which is lower than it used to be. When I closed the cover for the u.h. fuse box I had to give it an extra tap to snap the locks. When I did this the rpm's went up and the engine smoothed out.

Any ideas where the most likely source of the problem is? I really would rather not have to rip out all the wiring to test.

And my apologies for being so long winded, I just want to give as much info as possible.

When I closed the cover for the u.h. fuse box I had to give it an extra tap to snap the locks. When I did this the rpm's went up and the engine smoothed out.


Did this solve the problem? Could it be some connection there is loose or overheated from the "jumping" activity so that a poor connection resulted?

Only my 2 cents worth... I don't know much about cars, but the quoted part of your statement made me wonder.