[TR] Non TR

[Chip19474 at aol.com]

List,
 
This is definitely non-Triumph related but a general lesson can be learned  
and applied to our LBCs.......my daughter's 1999 Honda's Check Engine light 
came  on a month ago.  I did the easy (seldom ever works) attempt at 
clearing the  trouble code by disconnecting the battery and reconnecting - the 
light came back  on.  Since the car seemed to run okay, I told her to head over 
to a shop  offering a free engine light code check.  They came back with 
code#  P1337 which translated to "no signal from the crank position sensor".   
Their recommendation was replacement of the part for $335.  She went to  
another "freebee check engine light" shop and they confirmed the code and had 
a  similar recommendation.
 
A few Honda chat rooms on the web had great explanations of what the sensor 
 gizmo does and had advice on how to replace the sensor yourself.  But,  
since we Brit car mechanics and tinkerers know that problems are often simpler 
 than complex, I realized that the trouble code was telling the computer 
that  there was either an open (disconnected/broken) wire from the sensor to  
the computer or the sensor wires had become grounded somehow.
 
So, armed with flashlights and a small mirror (it's really dark on the  
drive belt side of these FWD engines), I found that the wiring harness to  the 
sensor had come free from it's snug mounting on the timing belt cover  and 
had been rubbing on the drive belt to the point where the belt wore a  hole 
through the harness cover and then the wire insulation fusing the  two sensor 
wires (now bare) together.
 
Splicing a piece of wire between the bad spot and the rest of the harness  
wasn't easy since there's not much room to move your hands down there but I 
got  it done and the code went away.  Honda has a good means of securing the 
 harness.  More than likely (although hard to prove at this point) the  
mechanic who replaced my daughter's timing belt last year was careless and  
didn't secure the harness properly.
 
Lesson to be learned.......when your engine light comes on (and you don't  
have a scan tool) - (HA, HA, HA - this is definitely not going to happen in 
our  Triumphs), find a shop that will read the trouble code, look the code 
up on the  internet and look for the smoking gun (simple problem) before 
jumping into a  major repair.
 
Chip Krout
Delaware Valley Triumphs, Ltd.
Skippack, PA
1976 TR6  CF57822U

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