Over the weekend while working on my dads del sol i got the voltage +/- light coming on after a 30 seconds of the car running. I changed out the altinator tonight and the light was still on. My dad in his old school wisdom decided to pull of the + battery cable while the car was running. When he did this all hell broke loose inside the car, dash lights, door locks, wipers, windows and anything electric powered went nuts. then after 5 sec the car dies and wont restart. I could smell burnt plastic under the hood but could not pin point it. I tried resetting everything by dissconnecting the battery. After hooking it back up after 30 min i still could not get it to start, no spark. grabbed my scan tool and could not make a connection to the ecu. My guess is i need a new ecu, but what else could have gone wrong? any ideas or suggestions would be great.

98 GS, it's a work in progress. http://monkeywrench.mesanetworks.net

Tell your dad that particular trick doesnt work on all Fuel injected cars. Fords are another you cant do that to but i have not seen damage like that. Then again I have a micro-Vat so i dont go pulling cables off batteries either.

Since the smell is from under the hood, try the alternator or Coil inside the distributor cap. The honda Dseries motors and i think the b series also have the Ignition coil located under the distributor cap. Only thing i can think of is that the field in the alternator went full tilt with no battery field present. I cant say this has happened to me so dont quote me on it. The issue you may have witnessed would be extremely high voltage and possible ground backfeed. Both are very dangerous to the ECU and many electrical items.

Turn the ignition on and see if the red light on the ECU illuminates. If it doesnt then the ECU is shot. If it blinks, count the blinks. They are codes. all 12's are normal.

Pull the alternator, chances are its fried.

IS this Del Sol a SI of base model?

If this is a characteristic of Honda charging systems you may want to ask around at Hondatech.com. This isnt 2GNT related but it is a good discussion topic so i will leave it.

Terry