Not sure what's going on with my 87 civic. I seem to be getting spark from the coil only sometimes (usualy when its cold). I recently replaced the head on the engine, and it ran fine. A few days later as I was driving down the freeway my tacometer dropped to 0 and the car died completely. I still had power to everything, the car just stopped running.
I pulled to the side of the road and tried to start it, it would crank over fine but not even try to start. a few minutes later i tried again and it fired right up. I drove it about 1/4 mile and it died again. When I popped the hood I found the O2 sensor had grounded out on the exhaust manifold and figured i had killed something deep inside my cars soul. A few hours later, once I convinced my friend to help me tow the car, I tried to start it again and it fired right up. I drove it a good 10 miles and it died again. the tac seems to be bouncing pretty crazily. I replaced the Coil and got no change, I am curious as to if I may ahve damaged the computer when the O2 grounded out or perhaps a spark modulator.
Any input would be excellent.

 

You said you have an 87. Is it an carburated version or a fuel injected version? I doubt that grounding the Oxygen sensor hurt anything, it probably would just cause the engine to run in a fault condition, since the sensor is bad. What your describing, if you are missing spark, I would think you might have a coil that's on the fritz and open's and closes, or you might have a distributor pickup sensitivity issue. Good Luck!

 

Sounds like a distributor problem. Something in the primary (low-voltage; stuff that initiates the spark) side. Does the 87 have an "ignitor" module similar to the 2nd-gen cars? If so, I would suspect it. Or the wires going to it--pop open the distributor and check to see that all the wires are plugged in securely!

--DD