Rep Power: 0

Thanks for taking the time to help me out with this issue! I am completely lost as to what to try next. Here's the story, my car has been running great with no issues. Yesterday it was driving beautifuly and started up with no issues. Today when I went to leave my house it cranked, sputtered like a rough idle, and then would not start.

At first, I thought it may be a fuel issue so my dad sprayed some starter fluid in the manifold while I cranked it but the car still would not start. Next, we pulled a fuel line and checked that it pumped when turning the car on. It squirted out like normal. We then pulled the spark plugs and burned the fuel off them and tried starting it again. No luck. After that we pulled the timing cover off and checked the timing belt. The belt looks great and has great tension. It was changed in the past few years by a very reputable shop and has a lot of miles left before the regular change time.

I was not getting any codes at first. Later I got a code for the crankshaft position sensor because I had unplugged it and one for heat on the MAF sensor because some of the starter fluid ignited when trying to start the engine. We manually turned the engine and I put my hand over each cylinder and they all had compression. At this point, I have no idea what the issue could be.

Any ideas would be much appreciated, this is my daily driver so I need to get it back on the road! Thanks all in advance

 
Rep Power: 367

have you checked the belt timing?
did not see any mention about how you tested spark, did you do it?
unplug camshaft position sensor and try again

 
Rep Power: 0

I haven't checked the timing, I'll pull the wheel off and do that tomorrow. I'd be surprised if it slipped though with how new the belt is and how it was driving perfectly yesterday but I guess that's the next step in diagnosis.

We tested the spark by plugging the plug into the coil, grounding it against the engine, and turning it over. It sparked pretty good. We only checked one cylinder though so I guess it could be that all the others are not sparking? I don't see how that would be though as all the plugs had the same amount of gas on them when we pulled them out.

What would unplugging the camshaft sensor do? My mechanical skills are pretty basic especially when it comes to engines.

The only thing that happened between driving it yesterday and it not starting today was driving down a pretty muddy road. However, I did that yesterday early afternoon and I started it up and drove twice yesterday evening with no issues. Is there any chance I maybe got mud somewhere that shorted something out this morning?

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me out with this! I really appreciate it.

 
Rep Power: 367

camshaft sensor is one of famous failing points for this. Not hard, just try it, electronic stuff.
you have 4 coils, any of them or their wiring could be faulty at this age of cars.
PS: Hondas hate alternators and electronic aftermarket stuff, look for denso or NTK.
or look for used parts in this scrapyard search site: car-part.com - I get parts there that does not a\negatively impact car, or when i want to test a part that is better to be OEM. A guy bought a bunch of ELD in scrapyard to test and found his to be at faulty and installed a new one.

 
Rep Power: 0

Ah good to know, thank you! Since there's a lot to pull off to correctly check the timing belt I decided to check the camshaft sensor first. I checked the sensor using the method shown in this video Although the wiring was working and I was getting voltage, the five-volt side would not change at all with the introduction of a metal object (using a socket). I ordered a new NTK position sensor and will share my results when I install it. I'm hoping the bad sensor is the culprit and I don't have a timing or spark issue! Thanks so much for your help and fingers crossed this fixes the issue

 
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Update with questions: So the camshaft sensor didn't fix the issue. Turns out my timing slipped about 2 teeth. Inspected the belt very thoroughly and it still looked brand new so I decided to just reset the time and put it back together. I had a couple of questions though.

1: I carefully inspected the tensioner and everything looked great. The bearings didn't have any rough spots and the spring still felt strong. However, the two sections that you connect with the pin only separated about a quarter of an inch after I put it on and removed the pin. Is this normal? I couldn't figure out what the separation of those two sections did when I had it off and wasn't sure if they were supposed to separate quickly or more when I put it on and pulled the pin. I don't want to put a bad tensioner on the car but I also don't want to shell out a $100 for a new one when this one looks perfectly good and all the bearings feel right.

2: Why in the world would a perfectly good Timing Belt jump two teeth? My last car had an extremely weak tensioner + leaked oil onto the belt and in the 6 years I owned it I never had any slippage.

3: Are there any extra things I should inspect or check before I put it together tomorrow? I don't know why it would have slipped time and I don't want it to happen again lol.

Thanks so much for all the help!

 
Rep Power: 224

How many miles are on it, and when was the last timing belt job? If it jumped time once, it will do it again. You got lucky it only jumped two teeth, any more and you risk pistons hitting valves.

I would do a full timing job. You can get a timing belt, tensioner, and water pump for around $100 on RockAuto.

 
Rep Power: 222

Slipped because of cheap belt/tensioner

 
Rep Power: 126

Assuming it was tensioned properly, it wouldn't be a perfectly good timing belt. Aisin or Gates are your only options that are reputable. Anything else is asking for trouble.

 
Rep Power: 0

I hear what you all are saying about the belt and tensioner but they both looked brand new. The car has around 260k miles and the timing belt was changed about 30k ago with all top grade NAPA parts. Maybe I need to get another brand of belt next time but I ran into bigger problems tonight.

After putting everything back together I tried to fire up the engine. Almost started and then completely died. Kept turning over but sounded like it had no compression. I thought maybe the timing slipped so I removed the cover and checked. It was still in time. A hand over the cylinder revealed much lower compression than there was before and the spark plugs were completely dry. I'm still getting fuel out of the fuel line and like I said, the timing still looked good (and yes, I checked multiple times both when I put the belt on and after the engine wouldn't fire).

Any idea what this could be? I'm kind of at the end of my rope with this project, the timing didn't originally slip more than two teeth and my dad and I triple-checked all the marks and all our work putting the belt back on. This isn't our first timing job and we've never had trouble before. Any help would be much appreciated!

 
Rep Power: 224

Do you have a compression tester? Or a leak-down tester?

 
Rep Power: 222

This is your next step, or take it to a shop