I have a 98 civic and it stalled one day. I checked distributor first and it looks OK but not great I moved on to the spark plugs and found out one was filled with oil. I took off the valve cover and found out a seal was ripped. I replaced all of the seals and put it back on the engine and cleaned everything and replaced the spark plugs. I tried to crank it up and its still cranking but not starting up.

suggestions? I'm fearing the worst that the engine might be blown. Could that happen?

Thank you!

 

Blown engine = hole in the block or something. Yours just won't start and had some oil on the plug.

Do you have a check engine light? Does the light work? Do you have spark?

 

i actually bought a new rotor and distributor and put it in because it needed one anyway and it still didn't start..and THAT'S when i remembered i should check for spark (doh! should have done that in the first place!) and there is no spark at all.

So, with that being said do you still think the engine is blown? I'm no mechanic by any means, just grew up working on my own cars but it FELT like it had compression in the one cylinder that had the oil on the plug when I had the plug out and i covered it when someone tried to start it (is this not a good thing to do?).

What I'm thinking now is the ignition coil, thoughts? I appreciate the feedback wellfedhobo!