Alright guys, the google brought me here in my searches for some help isolating this concern. The car is a beater, not in general, just this one specifically. Its my parents they bought for my sister to use and recently it was "making noise" so they parked it till I could get to look at it.

1 month later I go look at it and drive it around the block to find that a couple things, first the check engine lamp is now on and secondly any time I apply the throttle it boggs really bad and loads up. Initially that was the only problem I found but after parking it and poking around to try to pull codes shorting the blue 2 pin connector, that didnt work if anything it seems to have cleared the code as it was clearly on then after I did that it went out and didnt come back on. Now it will occationally start and run with the same bogging concern, OR it will roll over 5 or 6 times then evidently ignite too soon on a cylinder and just freeze wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-thunk. (noted while proof reading, I actually think most if not all of my starting issues started when I jumped the blue connector, however related or unrelated that may be).

Because it audibly completes more than 4 compression strokes before it stops one could assume its not a dead fault on one specific cylinder. Further reinforcing this idea I unplugged 1 plug wire at a time through all 4 and it would still kick back, unplugging all of them it would no longer kick back and would just crank and crank and crank reinforcing this idea of a random likely early spark condition.

I verified my mechanical timing, it is spot on. Considering this and the fact that my searches have pulled up a number of distributor replacement repairs I would lean towards the distributor. It has a 1 yr old coil in it and I replaced the ICM today with no change. With the distributor out I did note that it didnt spin freely, it wasnt locked up tight but it was very notchy when spinning.

My biggest problem goes back to what I said about it being a beater, My dad isnt money bags but has more than enough to try some things on this. That said I am really not in the mood to go replacing parts and not fixing it just to end up junking the car with 500 dollars in new parts on it and 250 dollars in labor in my pocket so he can go buy another car. I would rather start with the latter... I dont have a labscope so really isolating this further is boarderline impossible.

I also dont feel very comefortable spending money on junkyard parts... if its a common failure who is to say that that car isnt in the junkyard because the owner couldnt get it running, and replacing a bad with an unknown bad can lead to A LOT of head scratching and misdirection.

Thanks for any insite guys!

 

Codes are checked by looking at the LED on the ECU. Pull down the carpet where the passenger's feet would be, there's a LED behind a window. Turn the key on, if there are codes the LED will blink them as a number of blinks (up to 20), pause, blink again. You don't have to jumper anything.