I have a 97 Accord Se (2.2). Lately when I start it up in the morning, it has a rough idle but goes away after a few seconds. The other day it failed to start at all and had to be towed to the garage.
Here is where it gets weird. The garage calls and tells me my car is fixed and tells me it was flooded. I was also told they scanned for codes and found nothing but that's not true because the check engine has been on since I bough it last year! No suddenly the CE light is off. They also could not explain why it was "flooded" or what the mechanic did to fix it.

Can a fuel injected car even get flooded? Thought that was impossible? Anyone have any idea what cause the momentary rough idle or why it suddenly one day got "flooded"? Could it be an IAB going bad?

 

welcome to the forum. without knowing much about the car, rough idle on start could be from valve adjustment needed to idle cut off being dirty if either has not been done and car has over 100k miles when a car goes into a garage to be fixed, the mech will check for codes if the ce light is on, he then will reset it and see if it will come back on, if not it has cleared its self or may come back at a later time. if there is a problem with the injection system, it can pump a too rich a mixture or a too lean a mixture into the engine. yes you cannot flood it by pumping the gas peddle but the fuel system may.

 

Thanks for the reply! Since I got it back from the garage, it starts up smoothly. The mechanic told me he pulled the plugs and blew air into the cylinders but it still didn't start. He said he then put a few drops of tranny oil into the cylinders to help build compression back up because usually the rings get "washed out" during flooding. He tried it again and it started up. He wasnt sure what caused the flooding but recommended I spray throttle body cleaner in and around the throttle body like you also suggested. The car has 180k miles and it's my work car I just got last summer, so I would imagine routine maintenance has not been kept up over the years.

 

please be careful when spraying the throttle body, to not spray too much into the manifold. you can try a can of sea foam in your tank to clean injectors and throttle body. that is good milage on your car, it should go another 180k miles with no problem if kept up to par.