1990 Accord LX, Automatic, Mileage: 187xxx

car drove fine all yesterday and all last night. this morning went to start it up to warm her up for my commute to work and idle started fluctuating, then it died completely. the idle did have a little jump to it in the past few months right at start up, but went away within a couple seconds as the engine warmed up. The car started up just fine, there was spark and everything, but then the idle just slowly slowed down until it went below 500 and the car eventually died. Started her up a second time, same thing happened.

I was looking into replacing my motor mounts as well as cleaning PCV/IACV out since the rough idle seemed to be symptoms of those problems. Tune up was done about 10k miles ago and distrubutor/spark plugs were changed in 20k miles ago.

What seems to be the problem? is the car safe to drive/start up? i thought about giving it some gas to bring the idle up but didn't want to make the situation any worst. sounded like the motor couldn't breathe or not enough fuel going into it? what weirded me out was that it fired right up and progressively slowed down in idle, eventually dying.

 

Well a jumpy, crazy, stupid acting Tach is very often a sign of a coil shorting out.
I would start the diagnostic process by checking for spark at the plugs, if not check for battery voltage at the Black/yellow wire at the dist when the key is on. You should be able to hear the fuel pump run for 2 seconds when the key is turned on or have someone crank the car while you just barely crack open the fitting at the fuel rail, this will prove fuel pressure.
The 90-91 has the coil under the dist cap and a high failure rate, I believe due to the heat.
I've always recommended the coil And ignitor both be replaced at the same time, due to experiencing many comebacks from just changing one or the other.