I have a 94 Honda Accord LX with 189,000 miles. Manual Transmission and recently replaced hydraulic. Good maintenance record, but a recent problem. Periodically the car will not start. It will try to turn over and will sometimes have a small back fire, but then will not start at all. There does not seem to be any correlation in time of day, weather conditions, amount of gas in the tank, etc. Have checked wires, connections, etc. The car was stolen and retrieved about one year ago and the original dealership doing repairs indicated that the catalytic converter had been damaged. The car repairs were however finished by a different mechanic shop and they said the catalytic converter was fine, but that the exhaust system needed repair - result was a new tailpipe and portion of exhaust system replaced. I am now wondering if the current symptoms reflect a problem with the catalytic converter?
A bad catalytic converter is not going to cause this sort of problem. Sadly, it’s going to be very difficult to diagnose unless your mechanic can get the car to fail while he is present! There are a number of things that often cause this sort of problem on 94 Accords but until your mechanic experiences the failure, addressing the possibilities is a real (expensive) crap shoot. Most electrical components will test fine from now until the cows come home until a failure occurs. They work until they don’t…sigh.
I hate it when people throw parts at a problem, but in this case I would repair or replace the fuel pump relay and see how things go.