OBD1 & OBD2 Honda/Acura vehicles both use the same CEL checking procedure.
With a flashlight, you'll have to get
yourself situated under the passenger side
of your dash board and look to the right
of the glove box. You should see a
green colored
rubber block stuffed up under there
[Fig.1]. Pull this block down. You should see
two plugs residing inside of the block.
Pull out the smaller of the two plugs (either
a light grey or blue colored 2 wire plug) -
this is the
diagnostic plug [Fig.2]. Now, you can either make your own plug to "jump" the diagnostic connector
[Fig.3-4] or you can use a paper clip to arc the diagnostic
connector
[Fig.5], so that
your CEL light will begin to blink.
Fig.1
 |
Fig.2
 |
Fig.3
 |
Fig.4
 |
Fig.5 p/p clip image
soon
|
I've always found that it's easiest to have
the vehicle running while the CEL
is ON
before I
"jump" the diagnostic plug. Once the diagnostic
plug is "jumped", take a look at your gauge
cluster
[Fig.6] and your CEL light should begin to blink
[Fig.7].
Fig.6
 |
Fig.7
 |
Once you get the CEL light to blink, here's
the how the light is read:
-
1
long blink(s) = an incriment
of 10
-
short
blink(s) = incriments of 1
-
short pause = continuation of same code
-
long pause = a break between codeis (if more than one CEL code being thrown)
Video Example: Below is a video clip showing a sample of how to read a few CEL codes. The clip shows codes
22 (vtec solenoid),
41 (02 heater), and
19 (lock solenoid) being thrown, then repeats. You may want to watch the video a couple times to familiarize yourself with how the CEL light flashes numeric patterns, pauses, then flashes numeric patterns again.
It may take you a few minutes to figure out what CEL code(s) and patterns are being thrown by your ecu.
Special thanks to
Jameson Malpezzi for this video clip.
