So i was driving my hatch back home earlier and as i was driving the motor just shutoff. like as if all the sudden i had no spark. i still had all the lights on and radio was on just fine. As im rolling down the road to find a side street to pull on smoke starts rolling out from under the hood like as if i fried some part of the wiring harness so i'm like f.uckkkk. I tried to restart it and it cranked fine but it would not start. I came back a little later with the stang and tools and a work light to inspect the damage. after inspecting every inch of the engine and harnesses i couldn't find one burnt, melted, or fried wire anywhere. and with all the smoke i saw it had to of been the whole alternator going or an assload of wires and i mean i couldn't find one. so my question to you all is do you think the new reman alternator i put in the other day just went bad, and does what happened correspond to a fried alternator?

meanwhile my lil hatch is sittin a couple miles up the road all alone in a bad part of town

 

charges your system but your car should still run with no alternator unless your battery toasted...sure wires didnt touch???

 

im pretty sure nothing did. i looked at every wire i could possibly find but i couldnt find anything burnt or fried anywhere and there was a lot of smoke so i dunno how its something i could of missed if it were wires. I just figured since i just recently replaced the alt with a reman one and now all this happens it also makes me think that maybe the reman alt is what fried, or atleast i hope thats what it was cause i sure hope no wires in a harness somewhere fried. ugh

 

Is it possible the positive terminal of the battery touched your intake and grounded it out?

Use a multimeter and make sure you have power at the fuseboxes, check all the silly stuff including fuses you might get lucky.

And not to be an I told you so but the cost of AAA really pays for itself in times like this, any of your buddys got a truck? I would even chain tow or tow hook pull the thing to get it out of a bad area with someone sittin gin the civic steerring it.

 

check ur grounds at the chassis. pop off the distributer cap and check to see if the rotor broke off. Good luck bro.

 

This exact thing happened to me.

Your distributor is probably dead (one way or another), and the smoke came from uncombusted fuel dumping into your header and cat.

Peace
policy

 

I am guessing it is the dizzy if possible to get one from a friend of go to junk yard and buy for like 40-50$ and try it out. I think your cap and rotor needs to be changed or the dizzy is bad. what Kinda codes is the ecu flashing count the flashes and tell us.

 

I checked and the positivie terminal is nowhere near the intake not to mention its got a rubber cover over it and the intake is currently still the stock plastic airbox lol i havent got my cai in the mail yet.

All the fuses look good in the fusebox under the hood and none of those wires are fried.

I took off the rotor cap and everthing looks fine in the distributor. all the wires look fine and no burnt smells coming from inside the cap. rotor is still firmly in place and nothing appears to of broken off.

There is no flashing from the check engine light. it comes on when its supposed to and is off when its supposed to be. before and after this happening there has been no change in the cel activitiy.

What policyvote said kinda confuses me cause i dont see how all that smoke could be from fuel dumped into the header and cat. if that did occur how could smoke from that get out of the sealed exhaust system and into the engine bay? from what i recall the smoke also started rolling out from the back left of the engine bay which just so happens to be where the alternator is. i dont see how it could be the alternator but ive searched everywhere under the hood from every angle and i cannot find a single burnt or fried wire or harness anywhere.

the mechanic friend of mine had me check the black with yellow wire next to the blue wire going around then intto the distributor to see if it had power while in the run position and it did. but when i called him back to see what that meant or what to check next he had fallen asleep so im still at a loss if that means anything. also if i cant get this fixed like asap i might have a friend of mine use his truck and pull the car home on a tow rope like ya suggested. and thanks for all the help guys

 

under the distributer u can check for oil. Maybe the voltahe regulater could of took a **** and ur alternator wires fried b4 anything else. remove it and have it tested. its real easy to remove.

 

remove and test what? the voltage regulator on the distributor? or the alternator?

i did however take the alternator into advance and had it tested. its workin perfectly. also none of the wires on the alternator are fried.

what i dont understand is if i saw all that smoke there has to be something that it came from and as of yet i havent found anything. ughh

 

it got to be a wire or some thing burnt out i remember when my dash cluster burned out
a wire on the back. It took me to pull the whole wiring harness out of the car to figure it out. It some where.

 

My guess is its somewhere in the distributor... I had a similar problem with my hatch last year... it turned out that the rotor had come off the shaft.
Its worth takin a look.
Good luck!

 

got it fixed!!

turns out most of ya were right. the distributor went out after all. swapped in a new one and started up first try and no problems as of yet, been drivin it all night :D

thanks for the help guys