my civic stall on my daughter last tues morning, I had it towed home, and the first thing I checked was the fuel line and its getting fuel, I also pull each plug and they were wet with gas... so I started checking for spark and found that only the #1 cyl had spark so bought new dist.cap and rotor and now all 4 cylinders have spark...so I pull the coil off and checked the resistance with my mulitimeter and its within specs....the engine cranks but wont start.....


Im about to give up and take it to a shop, so any ideas????

 

if you were only getting spark to one plug im kinda doubting a dizzy cap and rotor would do it. might need a new dizzy if its sparking intermittently or something. make sure you are really getting spark from all 4 plugs. and also make sure you pull the fuel pump fuse or relay before trying this (you don't want to ignite fuel being pushed up the plug hole)

 

Check that the timing belt hasn't skipped, this is a common reason for sudden death on the road.

Make sure the plug wires are plugged to the proper posts on the cap. It won't run if the wires are out of order.

 

hey thanks guys...the wires are in correct 1-3-4-2 order... maybe it jumped timing...next I will check rotor to see if its hitting #1 when it should be..

 

well as i said before im pretty skeptical a cap and rotor can be bad enough to only be sparking on 1 cylinder. another forum i post on someone is having issues with their spark and the coil was bad. could be something else in the dizzy possibly a bad ignitor. any codes being stored?

to check if it jumped a cog take the valve cover off and look at the cam gear with the engine at TDC #1 piston. arrow should point straight up

 

cool...thanks dstroman that makes sense....I was gonna try that next.. would I be able to tell by just bringing the #1 piston to TDC and checking the rotor or do I need to remove the valve cover...

 

dstroman you were right!!! The distributor was bad... I had it towed to a shop, and it turned out to be a bad dist. Paid $350 for a new one parts and labor...and now I need to replace the wires plugs brand you recommend ?