A few days ago I pulled the car out of the garage to change my spark plugs. I was sitting in the car and it was idling, all of the sudden it ran like crap and died out. Attempts to start it was simply turning the engine. Today i tried starting it for the heck of it and now I can hear 1 cylinder firing but the car still won't start. Anyone know what to do?

 

First start with free and easy stuff like making sure there is fuel in the tank. are there any broken or corroded wires or connections and is everything still connected. this includes your battery and alternator connections, then I would move on to taking the distributor cap off and inspecting the contacts on the rotor and the cap to see if there is any corrosion or carbon tracking inside, if you have some compressed air available you can blow out the cap and inside of the distributor to remove dust LOW PRESSURE ONLY no more than 10psi. after you put the cap back on check to see if you have spark, just take off one plug wire and attach it to any spark plug you have laying around and ground it to the engine block and crank the engine. if there is spark you are good to go, if there is fuel, there is spark and all your connections are good, check compression, be sure to remove all the plugs when doing this test. if your compression is there and even ( within 5 to 15lbs of each other) your engine needs four basic things to run; air (oxygen), fuel to mix with the air, compression (to make it ready to go boom) and spark to make it go boom if all of those are present it should run, take one out and no go. this is all very basic stuff you may have already done but if not start there. GL

 

sounds like your ignition control module took a crap. it controls the spark obviously hahaha. it could be defective i have had a icm go bad on me after changing spark plugs and wires once i guess to much resistance from the new wires and spark plugs hahaha or it could of been just a coincidence. could also be main relay. bang the bottom of your dash under the steering wheel hard and try to start

 

Thanks and iv'e narrowed it down to either the Icm or the distributor.

 

can you let me know what leads you believe its the icm of distributor? might help others?

 

do you have spark at the wires? you didn't tell us if there is spark or not. have you checked fuel pressure? all these small details might help others