Help, 98 Accord hard on gas / bad idle
 

Hello all,
I have a 98 Honda accord 4cyl vtec 125k - using 87 octane fuel. It
started having high consumption of gas around 122k, check engine light
was intermittently coming on. AutoZone hooked up the computer and it
stated that the primary O2 sensor was faulty, well I had it replaced
and no change. Took it back and their computer still reported the
same thing, So I then took it to the Honda dealer, they told me the
catalytic converter was going bad and was starting to plug up. Anyways
they wanted about 780.00 to replace it with. Upon talking with other
people in the industry I guess this is a very rare condition, so I
opted not to replace it and just replace the O2 sensor that goes into
the catalytic converter. Again this did not solve the high gas
consumption and or the check engine light. Also the guy that replaced
the O2 sensor did an exhaust compression check and stated that the
catalytic converter is not plugged, he believes it’s just fine.
Also when the check engine light is on, the idle is weird.. What
happens is; When stopping and or if the car is coming down from its
RPMs the engine almost dies then it seems to recover normal idle at
800 RPMs. So if I rev up the car and let off of the gas, the RPM’s
drop down to 100-200 and about 4 secs later it recovers.
Anyone have ideas to why it is consuming so much fuel -I am getting
around 20mi where normal is 28-30 (tailpipe is very clean, no leakage
anywhere) and what is going on with the idle?
Otherwise the car sounds really good and idle is smooth after it
recovers. Before I bought it, @ 110k the maintenance was all
completed – Timing belt, all belts, water pump, spark plugs, and
battery.

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