97 accord F22B2 No power when warm

Eric,
I purchased a 1997 Honda Accord SE (F22B2) as a gift for a needy family earlier this week. The seller had purchased in a few months back for their kid and when they had the radiator replaced the mechanic told them it had a major oil leak. When they heard this they decided they no longer want to spend money on the car and put it up for sale. With this sell they included all paperwork they were given with the car and all paperwork (receipts) they had collected as well.

Digging through the receipts I found the plug wires, distributor cap, rotor, fuel pressure regulator, radiator, radiator hoses, thermostat, fuel filter had all been purchased new within the past couple months. I looked at each of the items to make sure they did get installed on the car and all of them look new so I am confident they are.

The oil leak was a super easy fix (I spotted it the minute I opened the hood) the valve cover gasket was hanging out in one corner and no Honda bond was placed in the corners where it goes over the cam. So 45 min and a couple cans of brake clean later the oil mess was cleaned up and no more leaks have been found.

The other issue that was noticed during the inspection of the car (and was not mentioned by the seller) however is where I am having problems. If you start the car cold it idles well (high because of cold start but nice and smooth), and the car runs and drives fine for about 1 mile or so. But once the car hits operating temps and goes closed loop the engine stops making power. Any throttle over 1/8 or so results in engine bogging and because of the lack of power the transmission also stops shifting correctly. My first assumption was that the timing belt had never been changed (at 160,000) and it had jumped a tooth. To my surprise when I pulled the cover I saw it had a Gates belt on it meaning it has been changed previously. I went ahead and tossed a long zip tie in cylinder 1 and brought it to TDC on compression stroke and checked the cam timing on the sprocket. The sprocket UP is pointing UP and the ticks on the sides match perfectly with the top of the cylinder head so all is well there. I went ahead and pulled the IACV hoping maybe that would be the crappy idle once warm to my surprise it was fairly clean, I did go ahead and clean it a little better and function it several times to make sure there were no issues before reinstalling. I have replaced all 4 spark plugs to have 4 known new plugs in (NGK of course) with no change in running condition. There are no codes on the car however when I first brought it home there was 1 stored code for rich condition. I have tested the TPS to make sure the voltage was in range and the results were .5 – 4.3 which is in line with the .5 – 4.5 spec. I checked to make sure all vacuum hoses were routed per diagram with not issues there (also inspected hose condition). I have manually checked timing with light and found it to match the live data perfectly so no issues with timing at all. Also the live data on the o2 sensors look in line with what I would expect from them. The timing at idle is around 15-16 which looks good.

The only issue I have found is fuel trim. At idle the car bounces around -27 meaning the car is running rich and it is trying to pull fuel. When throttle is given (under load or in park) the fuel trim changes pretty quickly. Anything over 1/8 throttle it hits zero on fuel trim and stays there, during this time the engine is bogging horribly. It will rev up to 5k in park but takes a while to get there and bog’s the whole way. So my dilemma is with what could be causing this.
I am going to check fuel pressure at running temps for kicks to make sure fuel pressure isn’t dropping as the car runs I doubt I will find that it is however. I pulled the plugs after roughly 2 hours of run time (about 4 miles of driving time included) to find 3 of the 4 plugs looked white as they did new in the box. But the 3rd plug had some reddish color and some mild blackening on one side (didn’t look like oil but you could see specs of black not just coated in black).

I am running out of ideas and was able to get a new ECU for cheap and didn’t want to get to that point and have to wait a few days for it to come in so I ordered it. $25 to save 3 days of trouble shooting it was worth it. The ECU will be here tomorrow but I have pulled the current ecu and can’t find anything that looks bad on it (doesn’t mean there isn’t anything just not visible).

My current idea is that MAYBE cylinder 1 with the discoloration on the plug has a bad injector that is dumping massive amounts of fuel in it. This is telling the o2 sensor the car is running rich and causing it to trim back. Trimming back is starving the other cylinders of fuel creating a very lean condition and causing the plugs to stay perfectly white. This would also align with the fact that when it goes closed loop the car runs like crap but open loop runs good. What are your thoughts on this? What is the easiest way to test this injector? (was thinking about pulling the rail and sticking each injector faced into water bottles with the ignition on and apply throttle and watch the spray patterns of each and compare)

Anyways I am running out of ideas of what to check next so before I am completely out I wanted to reach out to you as I’ve stumbled across some of your videos and you seem to have worked on many honda’s over the years.

The pics of live data are both taken while car is at idle after car is warmed up. Not sure why the 2nd o2 suddenly is reading more voltage than 1st out of all the live data I have viewed on this car this is the only time it has happend and only for a few seconds so I snapped a pic.

The White plug is what cylinder 2,3,&4 all look like. The other is a pic of cylinder 1 plug.