My wife's 1995 Civic died a couple days ago. The original problem was that the alternator failed and was actually grounding the 12V to ground.

After replacing the alternator and some additional work, the Civic will not start. I pulled a plug and cannot see any spark when the engine is cranked. It also sounds like there isn't any spark (or at least any ignition taking place).

The check engine light does come on and go off after a short delay. The fuel pump also runs for a couple seconds. The black and yellow wire going to the distributor has 12v when the ignition is switched on. The 12V goes through some black module in the distributor, then into what looks like a spark control module. Any suggestions on how to diagnose this?

I changed the alternator with a generic one from Costless Autoparts. It mounted okay. Could there be anything wrong with it that would keep the engine controls from allowing it to spark? Is there anything that I could have done in replacing it that would cause a problem?

I did crank the engine a few times without spark plugs. Could that have damaged anything? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Cranking with the spark wires disconnected can blow the coil. Never let it fire into an open circuit. Take the cap off and hold a grounded test wire near the coil output spring, then crank and watch for sparks. If there are only weak yellow sparks, the coil is bad.