Rep Power: 0

Well it seems after 21 years it was finally my turn to get stranded, lol.

A bit strange how it happened, and very lucky for me I might add. I went out to a store for an errand, came home and wanted to park in the garage. Drove into the garage then decided I wanted to back it up a foot or so, and then it suddenly quit. There was no odd behaviour before it quit. Then I tried cranking and it didn't start up. So I have a crank no start situation. After years of watching ETCG and others and reading valuable info here, I finally have to deal with this myself, so here goes.
When I turn the key I get good cranking. I hear the few seconds of whirring from the electric fuel pump. The air filter looks greyish, but wasn't clogged up or anything like that. Tried cranking without the filter and got no start. Soooo.... leaning toward spark?
Waiting for someone to help me to check for spark later tonight. For now though, I've checked a few things in the distributor. With the key ON, I get battery voltage to the black/yellow wire and to the blue/white wire. (will check for pulses when my helper comes over).

I also checked the resistance of the coil, seems to be out of spec somewhat. Primary should be 0.63-0.77 ohms according to the service manual, I read about 0.9 ohms. Secondary should be 12.8 to 19.2 kohms, but I measured only about 7.7 kohms. On its way to becoming shorted? Edit: Also, I could hear a sort of humming or whining, seemed to be coming from the distributor.

More to follow later...

Update:
- getting pulses at injector
- no spark from the coil
- removed the wire from the igniter to the coil, got pulses from the igniter blade terminal, so the igniter is good.

So I'm going to get a replacement coil

 
Rep Power: 211

Test the coil per Ezone's way listed in reply #4 in this link: https://www.civicforums.com/forums/2...-no-spark.html

IIRC...Ezone has said that testing the coil his way can cause a weak/failing coil to permantly fail (a good thing in this case) yet, won't damage a strong coil.

 
Rep Power: 518

My ears were burning. LOL


You can't find the most common problem this way because they don't normally fail in a way you can test for with an ohm meter.
If you have a megger tester you MIGHT find the issue. But there are simpler ways. .

.Dynamic testing is where it's at.
Does it generate a lightning bolt? Will that lightning bolt jump a 10mm+ air gap?

If yes, coil and everything leading up to it is ok.
If no, then you can bust out a meter and diagnose if the coil is receiving "trigger signal" or not and go from there (assuming you know and can test for what specific items must be present in order to make a coil produce spark)

If you can make the coil produce a spark of 1/8" and no more (while testing directly at the coil tower), the coil is bad. If you understand how it all works you would understand how I arrive at such a coclusion

 
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Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I understand the basic flow of how the distributor works. I guess what I wrote previously wasn't all that clear. I worked back from the plug wire (no spark), then "upstream" to the coil tower (no spark), then checking for triggering from the igniter to the coil (yes), so the igniter is functioning and the coil is bad.

Looking at the coil, it has some discoloration on the side, I guess it was overheating a bit. The laminated metal plates look like they've seen better days.

 
Rep Power: 0

New coil in, back in business