I have a 89 Prelude Si that has a bit of a starting issue. I bought it about 5 months ago after it had been sitting for 2 years. Surprisingly it started after it was primed a bit(clicking the fuel pump on and off). I started it and it ran great, then i shut it off. It started again fine and i drove it down the road about 2 miles, turned it off, started it again and it ran fine. I drove it back to my garage and went to back it in and it made funny little backfiring sounds, then died altogether. I wasn't able to get it started again. It was getting gas and it would crank but i wasn't getting any spark. The spark went into the coil but nothing made it to the plugs. So I replaced the coil. It ran!! twice. it started and ran till i shut it off and started again fine till i shut it off and then it just did its funny little backfiring type noise. I had to have it towed home. It seems to just eat coils somehow. I am almost completely sure that if i got a new coil it would start twice and then die. Well any help on this would be much appreciated.

 

You can fry a coil if you have too much resistance in the spark plug system anywhere. This extra resistance could come from bad wires, plugs, rotor, cap.

Replace everything I just listed and try that out, should work things out.