Gas Pedal Resistance and Sticking Has Been Fixed

Thanks to some folks on HCF (HondaCivicForum), I was able to fix the problem with the gas pedal sticking and providing resistance when you first step on it. Applying the fix was pretty easy and only required 10 minutes and a wrench. The problem turned out to be the throttle cable getting too loose. When I tried to measure the deflection it seemed to be about a 1/2 inch, which is within specifications, but I decided it still needed some tightening. Here is what the throttle cable looks like under the hood.


I believe the throttle cable responds to the gas pedal and opens the butterfly valve inside the throttle body, controlling the amount of air going into the engine, which regulates the throttle. Apparently too much slack in the throttle cable will cause the gas pedal to have a lack of control when first stepping on it. The first thing to do is to loosen the locknut enough so that you can take the throttle cable out of the bracket and access the adjusting nut.

Next, the adjusting nut needs to move to the left by a couple of threads so that the throttle cable becomes tighter. I didn't actually measure how tight the cable was after I made the adjustment, but I made it so that I could notice a difference in the tension. Hopefully I'm still within the 3/8 to 1/4 inch that the specs call for. Once the adjustment is made, put the cable back in the bracket and tighten up the locknut. At this point, you might want to check the tension on the cable and re-adjust, if necessary. After making this tweak, the gas pedal resistance and stickiness was gone. The feel and control of the gas pedal was back to normal.