Hey all gotta problem with my stock '89 LX sedan.

Was just cruising along and came to a stop sign, immediately upon accelerating, as I was engaging the clutch the car dies and wont turn over. Start motor is cranking but motor wont fire up.

I replaced the cap and rotor hoping the problem would be cheap and easy, no such luck. But I am getting spark and the rotor turns when starter is cranking.

The one difference I have with all the posts I read is that there was no intermittent problems before and no waiting around for a while will result in ignition. It is simply dead. I know it's not the main relay because I have a spare and tried it too. The fuel pump if working and the fuel is flowing, injectors maybe?

Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas to explore? I don't think it's a grounding problem but am re-grounding various points as well. No blown fuses either. No codes being thrown, would a bad distributer throw a code?

Correct me if I'm wrong but if the timing belt jumped a tooth/notch then the motor wouldn't start and any combustion taking place might not be detectable because the exhaust valves being open during ignition?
Or would that cause a backfire? (which is very detectable)

I don't have a compression tester but if this is a compression issue the problem would have been a gradual one getting worse with time, yeah? Or is it entirely possible to have complete compression loss very quickly. The car does have almost 290K miles on it.

The tank is half full.
Also the tow truck driver was the helpful type and sprayed some sort of starter stuff into the air intake and said that the problem isn't a fuel side problem, he could have been wrong I guess. Tow truck guy also suggested that a bad condenser could be to blame.

I had just jumped a minivan about 10-15 minutes prior (no good deed goes unpunished?) but I don't see why that would matter. Would it? I know I placed the jumper cables properly but the jump was unsuccessful and that does bother me, I hope that van didn't have wiring issues. I didn't smell any burning smell that would suggest that the ecu was damaged in the jump and it blinks once when turning the key and again when turning off.

Thanks

 

Problem Solved!
Turned out to be that the ignition coil was corroded and consequently providing some spark but no enough.

Popped in a new one and bang!
Well not exactly, had to give it a couple of tries to burn off all the gas that had built up from the many failed starts.

Smile Happy Smile