Got me a 90 civic hatch with a b20 fbo. I’m running the car on 0bd1 distributor, ecu, and etc. but with 0bd0 injectors and resistor box. I’m running jumper harness on the ecu and distributor. The car drove fine and started fine before, drove it throughout the town fine. One day I Drove the car for 3hours straight on the highway to go somewhere then it died on me while driving it. The car all of a sudden just lost power but with the car still on I changed gears, gassed it and all it was doing was revving but nothing happened then when I pulled over, it died and wouldn’t start up again just cranking. Now it just cranks. I hear the fuel pump prime, I hear the main relay clicking, I have spark, I change spark plugs, all ground are good, change distributor internals, change distributor, distributor rotor is faced towards cylinder 1 when TDC, changed ecu, no CEL, timing is correct, belt is not missing tooth because when I turn the crank with a ratchet it turns good, no leaks or spills on the floor, haven’t done compression test but when I turn the crank I feel resistance, not sure if that tells me if there is compression or not so let me know on that. I’m lost now, it still just keep cranking after all that change. Maybe the jumper harness became bad in the middle of driving? What I’m confused about is why did the car just lose power in the middle of driving? Help would be appreciated

 

To me this sounds like either a timing issue or a fuel issue. Remove the fuel return line and check that the when the system primes, fuel is making through the rail. Test that you have voltage going to the injectors. Off the top of my head I can't remember the exact voltage that should be at the injector for low impedance injectors but it should be more than zero as the injectors are switched in the ECU using ground. You can also pull the fuel rail and injectors, put them in bottles and verify the injectors are actually firing and flowing fuel while cranking but I doubt you will need to do this. You could also just try spraying some carb cleaner in the intake to see if it will at least try to run which would isolate the issue to the fuel system.

If it passes all of those tests, I would assume it is a timing issue. The belt may have jumped a few teeth or if you have adjustable cam gears, they may have slipped. Pop off the valve cover, set the engine to TDC and check the cam gears are aligned. If you are running an aftermarket OBD1 distributer, they are all bad. Typically the ignitor will fail but have also seen the crank position sensor fail but if those are truly bad, generally you will not get spark. Regardless, they are all questionable.

If you bought a quality jumper, it is unlikely it failed but not impossible as this would cause the engine to shut off and being you have spark, the ECU thinks it has some type of timing signal. More likely this would be caused by a physical timing issue (cams and/or ignition) or fuel issue. The engine will run with almost all the sensors unplugged. Really the only thing it needs is fuel, air, spark and compression. These are dumb engines which is what makes them great.

 

I would do a compression test.. hopefully your belt didn't slip and bend your valves.. First align the motor to TDC and check to see if it slipped.