I was driving my 89 rex with a d15bvtec motor at about 75mph and it started losing power suddenly. It would surge for a second then drop again.. I stopped on the side of the interstate and found the catalytic converter glowing red. I assumed it was a clogged cat (factory 272k mile cat). I had it towed home and I then hollowed out the cat( new exhaust was planned already). The car right now also has no muffler thanks to a deer.

It still would not fire up. An occasional spit or sputter or loud pop was all I could get. I checked the spark(fine) checked for fuel (fine) and still nothing. I tried to see if the timing belt was off a tooth perhaps, but I think I did that wrong when I readjusted it. I set the marks to line up on the red mark instead of the white mark by itself. I think this is way off, but even by moving the distributor I wasnt able to get it to fire.


Any ideas? I will set the timing to the white mark, and try to see if it will fire then, but outside of that I am lost as to what to check next. Thanks for any advice!