I have done lots of maintenance to my 1997 Accord 2.2 non vtec M5 in the last few years. This has me stumped at the moment. Cranks but won't start. My fuel pump is 2 months old. Checked for fuel at the rail. All good. Pulled a spark plug and found oil all over it. Replaced plugs and wires. Replaced valve cover gasket. Put spark plug in wire before putting in engine to see if I have spark. I have spark when cranking. Only code I have is P0401 egr small leak detected. I'm thinking crank or cam sensor but I don't have codes for them. I read about a sensor in the distributor that goes bad. If that sensor is bad would I still have spark? I might pick up a distributor from the junkyard tomorrow. Also going to try and borrow a good scan tool (mine is very basic) to see if the pcm is seeing rpm from the crank sensor. If anyone has any other advice I'm all ears. Thanks.

 

Charged up the battery today and heard popping noises thru the intake....I'm thinking the timing belt jumped a couple of teeth. The belt is still intact because I cranked the engine over while I had the valve cover off. Everything looked good at that time. But with a fully juiced battery i can definitely hear popping thru the intake. Need to do some research on timing belt replacement...

 

Are you able to check the timing of the car? Popping (I presume) means backfiring. I would think that the timing being off would give you some idea on if the belt is the issue. Did you change the distributor as mentioned above?

 

I did change the distributor. I believe timing is regulated by the computer on a 97. And I can't use a timing light because the engine has to be running to check it that way. The only thing I can think of is the belt jumped a tooth or two somehow. Has anyone ever had this happen? Belt stays intact but jumps a tooth? The car has 238k miles and I'm not sure when the last timing belt was done. But I know it's still intact. Saw it when I removed the valve cover.

 

Although not the simplest, you can check the belt tooth issue by manually rotating the crank with a (36mm?32mm?) socket on the crank and lining up the marks.

Maybe the tensioner is what has weakened and caused the belt to skip.

Here's some guide and video to show where the marks are:

https://www.ericthecarguy.com/forums...-not-aligning/

You might be able to move the belt back over and see if it starts.

Other discussions on timing position
https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-...estion-480292/