Civic44

Suddenly, my car won't start. It's an 88 DX. There is no spark. The cap and rotor are new. What do I most likely need to change? Where is the coil? If the distributor is made of 2 halves (the plastic-covered half and the metal half), which half do I need to buy? If a friend of mine has a whole distributor assembly at his place, should I just have him ship it to me and change it, or are there other things to check first? Thanks.

zexdrex

its most likely the dist when i had the stock motor in my crx (DX) i had the same prob does it crank but not start if it does i would say thats it . . . hope that helps

Steve91

You probably don't have to buy a whole new distributor. It's most likely the igniter or the coil. Check the factory manual and run the trouble shooting procedure. I believe the ignitor is about $80 and the coil is $40.

Civic44

If i buy a whole distributor, does that include the ignitor and the coil?

Francois

If you just look at the picture and see the #4,that means that's all you get.
If so,I believe you will have to buy a new coil and a new ignitor seperately.

Well,I didn't buy any.So I don't have the real answer.
I know that there's a company that sell rebuilt distributor(Complete with cap) on ebay and the guy is from Montreal!

Civic44

i bought the whole assembly. I hope it has all i need.

Urban Business

a dx dizzy is like 80$

PatEJ6

just check first if your connections aren't loose on the ignitor, it happens so often.

Civic44

Where is the ignitor? What does it look like? Is it visible when I remove the plastic cover? I already checked the connections of the 2 little harnesses, what else can I look at?

PatEJ6

the ignitor is a brown plastic rectangle thing kinda, it's right under the cap, it might be black too. there is 3 wires connecting to it iirc. A guy with us when we went to Niagara 8 had this problem, car is running fine then we stopped to eat and wouldn't start after lunch. I tightened the ignitor connections and it started up.

Civic44

I will definitely try that when i get home! Thanks!

PatEJ6

can't believe 3 peoples from Montreal posted in the same thread lol

Civic44

Montreal rocks (and it's friggin hot). OK, I checked the wires and on the front and top of the distributor, there are three wires: two wrapped in tape together and a 3rd, yellow wire. This wire went into the ignitor but when i followed it a couple of inches, it went nowhere! it was cut. Anyway, i checked on my new distributor which came in the mail, and it doesn't even have that wire, not even a hole for it. WTF? Anyway, maybe the dizzy on my car is from an automatic or a 1.6 or something. I left it at the mechanic's and told him to just install the new one (had to push it there).