Hey, So I have a 2001 honda civic, automatic transmission with about 170k miles on it. this past week my car has been slow to read my transponder key (It has no battery or buttons just a solid key) and would leave me unable to start my car for awhile. I'd have to stick the key in, and wait until it decides to read the key and activate my fuel pump. Unfortunately it will rarely cut off my fuel pump while I'm driving and I have to take the key out and wait.
I've tried cleaning the battery terminals, the cables as well as make sure they were tight, used my other keys to see if it was just a bad key. I also took off the housing to the steering column and the ignition switch looked new. There seems to be some delay between the key and the immobilizer. When I'd leave the cables off the battery and put them back on after a few minutes or sometimes unplug the cable on the ignition switch and plug it back in it works for a little while. It just seems to have a delay somewhere between reading the key and activating the fuel pump.
Any ideas or suggestions? I've been to a couple mechanics and they haven't been able to figure it out either. Thanks!
Sounds scary!
Loosen and clean any ground wires under the hood you see bolted to the frame.
Stop by an Autozone and have them do a free battery/alternator test and code scan (free is good!).
Every once in a while you get lucky and the one helping you knows how to fix it.
I found this link too:
https://f01.justanswer.com/dinotapia/dd6cb2fc-8626-4241-b5d8-87c98fe97a28_imobi.pdf
Thanks for that link, I'll have to figure out how to read the diagrams but that at least gives me somewhere to start! I did stop by autozone and they tested the battery and said it was good. The code scan just brought up the P0401 code (the EGR passages are a little clogged, I've been trying to clean them out off and on, got a new EGR as well)
The owner of the shop spoke to me to see if I could set up a time next week to have their senior mechanic look it over. I'll have to bring in that PDF as well, maybe those diagrams will make more sense to them.
Thanks for the help! Hopefully it'll resolve this problem!
Good luck! Sounds like a pain in the ....
Just an update, finally took it to a honda dealer and paid them to diagnose it. They couldn't find the issue but my immobilizer and ECU were fine. They just reprogrammed it and haven't had any issues for the last couple weeks.