I've got a 95 Civic DX with the 1.5L motor (D15B7, automatic) that has 165k miles on it. I got it about 6 months ago and haven't had any issues with it so far. The last few days the car has run a little rough, when it was warm the idle would dip really low when I came up to stop lights (as if the car was about to stall out). It would stumble a bit off idle but once the revs got up a bit it seemed to run just fine. This morning I went to go to work and crank the car over and it does not start. It cranks just fine but it just won't fire up. I've only put about 6k miles on it since I've had the car and right when I bought it I replaced the battery, spark plugs, fuel and air filters, and I just changed the oil again the other day.

I'm sure the stumbling off idle the last couple of days has something to do with my problem but I'm not sure what could be causing it? Any thoughts?

 

sounds like the IACV. (idle air control valve)
Check for a truoble code for it other wise just clean it as it will need it anyway with 165K and put it back together. simple fix.

 

Cleaning the IACV should be easy enough and I'll do that tonight, however is that something that would prevent the car from starting up at all?

 

If its Completely Clogged.. LOL

 

Well I went on a hunch and pulled out my coil and tested it. First of all it was pretty corroded on all of the connections, that and the rotor was rusted onto the shaft pretty good and was a pain in the *** to get off. The resistance of the coil was about in spec, although there was a lot of corrosion around the spring. I cleaned everything up to see if the car would at least start and again it would not fire up.

I went ahead and pulled the spark plugs one by one and each were wet with gas, so I'm getting fuel. Grounding the tip of each spark plug on the head produced some spark, so the coil is halfway function, however it was orange in color. I read somewhere that if the spark is orange in color that the coil is weak (not producing enough voltage) and under compression when the plugs are installed, this spark will not be sufficient. I'm going to go ahead and get a new cap, rotor and coil (the rotor and coil looked like they should be replaced anyways) and I should get it installed tomorrow. Hopefully this is the fix to the issue.