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My '94 civic died while I was driving after about two minutes from my home. It turns over fine and the battery is good but it doesn't start. I bought a new car that same day because I was tired of fixing a '94 civic all the time. This was about a month ago and I had to buy a new battery since then.
I started working on it last weekend and bought/ borrowed all these tools from autozone to test all the basics. (Fuel pressure gauge, compression gauge, noid lights, starter fluid, etc...) Turns out the first thing I tried, spark tester, showed that I wasn't getting any spark. I took off the distributor cap and everything looked clean inside. Although I wasn't sure what the terminals of where the rotor hit should look like. I'm not sure what they're called exactly but those pins were not smooth metal, they were rough, bumpy, and kind of pale in color. Is that how they should look? I assumed that maybe the porous texture helps conduct the electricity better but I'm not sure.
I connected a test light to ground and saw that the ignition coil was getting power in the ON position. When my wife turned the key to crank the engine I could not get a spark from the coil (from a short distance) when connected to ground. I checked the resistance between the positive and negative connection and got .9 ohms with .2 between the wires of the ohmmeter so .7 ohms. The resistance between the positive and the coil was 17,000 I think so they were both okay.
When I tested the negative of the coil I saw on a youtube video that it should be sending current on and off continuously to create the spark. When I put my light tester to it and cranked the engine I saw that the light stayed on continuously. Is there any way that my light tester could not be picking up the rapid switch? If not, what does this mean and what part should I be buying? Just a new igniter?
No I haven't. I'm not a "car guy," I just do enough research to fix the problem at hand and then move on. This seems to be more than I have taken on in the past though. Does this sound like what it might be specific to my tests? Also, do you possibly have a link to a video or an instruction page for this?
Since you have the distributor cap off, just watch if the rotor rotates when the engine is cranking. If it does not, most likely the timing belt has failed.
All the sensors that detect engine rotation are in the distributor. So if the distributor shaft doesn't turn, the ECU thinks that the engine is not turning and will not try to fire sparks.
Since you have the distributor cap off, just watch if the rotor rotates when the engine is cranking. If it does not, most likely the timing belt has failed.
Before doing this^ mk test, remove the 15A hood fuse 31 to avoid blowing the coil.
Since you have the distributor cap off, just watch if the rotor rotates when the engine is cranking. If it does not, most likely the timing belt has failed.
All the sensors that detect engine rotation are in the distributor. So if the distributor shaft doesn't turn, the ECU thinks that the engine is not turning and will not try to fire sparks.
The rotor does spin, should I still check the timing belt? What about the fact that the ground to the coil does not turn on and off like it should, shouldn't that narrow it down to something?
Also Ohm test the coils as I describe in the link I posted.
No CEL codes but I just replaced the battery yesterday.
I'm not sure if full battery voltage is getting to it. I had the key in the ON position, put one wire to ground and the other wire to the coil, got nothing. But my test light was just showing yesterday that it was getting voltage. I did buy the cheapest tools at pepboys though, maybe that has something to do with it.
I checked the resistance of the coils, I wrote in my first post that they were fine.
The alignment on my timing belt seems a little off but I don't know if it's too off. What do you guys think?
I think I'm just going to buy a new distributor with everything on it today. I found it for $50 online
The pulses that drive the coil are of very short duration and don't show up well on a voltmeter. You would need an oscilloscope to see them.
Replacing the whole distributor would rule out a lot of stuff.
Does the CEL come on for 2 seconds then go out when you turn the key on but don't crank?
If the distributor rotates, it should make sparks even if the belt is out of time. It would not start, but sparks would fire-- which is not what your car is doing.
Since you have the cover off it is easy to turn the crank by hand to TDC and check the marks if you want to.
I replaced the distributor after about a week of letting the car sit without a distributor and engine cover on. Now when I try to turn the car over it barely cranks if it all. Also I don't hear the fuel pump prime anymore. It did both just last time I was working on it. Can anybody think of any connections to all this that a simple thing could fix?
I'm pretty close to just selling the car as not running by now. My apartment complex wanted the car out of the parking lot three weeks ago and the pressure of getting it running is driving me nuts.
07-22-2016, 05:41 PM
No spark igniter problem '94 Civic
