I have a 87 Civic that just recently quit on me and I have no clue what the problem is. The night it quit on me I was driving home and about halfway there it starts to hesitate when I push the gas, so I try to slow down and as soon as I press the clutch in the car cuts off. (The car has been cutting off frequently since I put some fuel injector cleaner earlier that week) So I try to kick start it and nothing happens, I then turn the key to start it and all I hear is the engine spinning fast. I then pull over to investigate and I see quite a bit of smoke. So I got a friend to help me get it off the road.

Upon further inspection we notice a lot of things that don't make since. (or at least to me they don't) First thing we notice is when we try to start it, it sounds like this
but here's the part I don't get, in the video you can see the cams moving but on my car they don't budge just the cam gear spins with the timing belt on and intact as far as I can tell. Another thing that puzzles me is that the bolt on the cam gear is loose, so we tighten it and tried to start the car and it just loosen back up. We checked the spark plugs and at first there was spark on all four but after checking it a while later only getting spark on one.

I've searched all over the web for answers and even ask a couple of guys I know who work on Hondas and they were even puzzled. I'm hoping that someone can help me figure it out otherwise I'm getting rid of it.

 

Gear turns but camshaft doesn't means that the keying pin has sheared. Remove the gear bolt and investigate. The bolt has to be tight to keep from having all the stress on the pin. If the camshaft won't turn at all, the cam bearings could be seized due to lack of oil to the head.

And of course turning the engine with the cam out of time is prone to bend the valves.