A friend bought a new car so I have her 1995 Civic EX 1.6 VTEC with me to either buy for myself or sell. Tonight, I compression tested and installed fresh spark plugs. I removed and grounded one spark plug wire to an old spark plug when I was compression testing. Now it won't start. There is no spark.

Is this is a common way to damage an ECU or coil?

 

Okay.

I was a little stressed and hoping for some quick relief when I started this thread.

Buying an ECU for a car that's not even mine would be an unfair lesson for my carelessness.

I'm searching and reading through previous posts. So far the most promising is to test the ICM for its cycling of the coil. I'm somewhat confident that I fried the coil, it actually smells burnt.

If anybody would like to offer their advice, please help. I'll post again when it's fixed.

Btw, compression test yielded 182-172-178-182 with warm engine. 173,000 miles...

 

Check the master fuses. And if the coil smells burnt then common sense should say start there by replacing it. If that doesn't work, move on to the next most likely culprit.

 

I fixed it this afternoon by renewing the coil.

failed coil:
(+) to tower = 9870 ohms
(-) to tower = 9870 ohms
(+) to (-) = 10.10 ohm

new coil:
(+) to tower = 16470 ohms
(-) to tower = 16470 ohms
(+) to (-) = 10.2 ohms

Everybody please disconnect the ignition coil when performing a compression test to avoid smoking the coil.

 

Glad you figured it out.

 

I usually disconnect the ECU fuse when doing a compression test. Since the computer has to send the coil a signal to turn off and on, you won't burn the coil. You also won't throw any fuel into the engine since the computer isn't turning the injectors on.

 

Thanks, I definitely will pull the ECU fuse next time, seems the easiest and safest way. It's ironic that I've been disabling the car to help prevent its theft by doing exactly that...