Ok the start of this problem is probable all my fault. Now I need your help to figure out what needs to be repaired.

Let me start by telling you what happened so I can tell you what seems to wrong. I have a 99 honda civic with a D16Y7 motor and the tec distributer. So a few months ago it started to overheat while sitting at the gas station. So I shut it down checked everything, the coolant that looked fine it was only a year old "changed when I changed timming belt and put in a new water pump", the fan kicked in after the temp to the top of the symbol on gauge on dash. This weekend was a hot weekend mainly above 100. I was pulling into my girlfriends garage and all of a sudden the temp gauge shot up again so I shut it down proceeded to check it out and I found I was 16 oz of water low in the radiator. 1 bottle of water that was in the car i put in but I was able to top off the radiator with it. drove it home the next day all seemed fine.

I thought maybe the cooling fan was comming on a little late like my experiences with my old mits starion had 2 cooling switches. I stopped at autozone and picked up the radiator fan switch and coolant temp sensor and put them in. Opened radiator and found it was a little low again prior to changing the switches.. about 8oz.. So I went ahead and put the new stuff in.

started right up ran great took it around the block ran fine. Now this is where I screwed up the car thinking that I havea small coolant leak the motor having 187k on it and looking a little dirty I decided to pressure wash the motor with a little engine deagreaser. Took the air nossle and dried a few things down started the motor. let it ran till the radiator fan kicked in at the midle of the temp switch where it should i was happy with that. then it kicked off and so I shut it down and was ready to take the car to work monday morning.

Here's the bad part. I pulled out of the driveway got to the end of the street and she started to spit and sudder. checked under the hood everything looked fine, closed the hood and proceeded to drive a couple more blocks. then she started to act up again. then she shut down. went to go start it again and wouldnt start seemed like i wasnt geting any spark. had to get it towed home.

Once I got home took another look under the hood and found distributer cap was dry pulled spark plug wires and found water in the valley. dried them out pulled the plugs they looked fine. put it all back together and she fired up took her around the block and she just didnt seem like she had all the power but she was running. Pulled it into the driveway and was wondering am I misfiring. So did the dumb thing pulled the wires from the plugs to see how bad it starts misfiring went throgh all 4 and it seemed to be about the same so why not do it again. Started on the drivers side this time, pulled the wire she started running really ruff then shut off. I said ok lets just start it again. nothing wouldnt start.

So I verified I had gas yep, ck for spark, nope. pulled plug and couldnt get it to spark against the block, spark plug light, tried a different plug same thing said ok must besomething else. Read in the manual about the icm and the coil. I have all the voltages going to the ICM and according to the manual I need to replace the ICM, but I decided to check the coil and found on the primary wining .99 to 1 ohn resistance.. book says it should be .63 - .77 and on the secondary winding found about 10k ohms book says it should be 12.8k - 19.2k. checking voltages on the coil I have 12v on terminals a and b, on the secondary winding terminal I also have 12v.

This is where I am not sure my coil is a little out of spec, but one end is low and the other one is high. So can the coil be bad or is it going bad. should I replace it? and the other question is do I do what the book says and replace the ignition control module, though the book dosent really do anything to really tell me if its bad it just verifies that the out put voltages are there. So I have one of4 options to fix it.
1). replace the whole distributer
2). replace the icm like the book says
3). replace just the coil and see what happens
4). replace both coil and icm.

I dont have an unlimited budget, but I love my car and I can count on it to get me from here to there.

 

I have seen other posts on this forum where people have blown their coil after pulling plug wires when the engine was running. In addition, your coil is not giving the correct multimeter readings. Therefore, my recommendation would be that you replace the coil.

By the way, your pictures are not showing up because the links must be inserted into:

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That would be the cheaper item I am leaning towards that idea, what do you think actual honda or aftermarket?

 

I would prefer genuine Honda for this important item.

For the future, here's a good online source:

http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/

However, I suspect you need a new coil yesterday, so it'll be faster get it locally.

 

Wow two of these at once. I guess the pulling the spark wires test may not be so wise on a Civic. A potentially safer way to kill cylinders one at a time could be disconnecting the fuel injectors instead.

I didn't see any mention of replacing the thermostat. That's the first thing to do in a case of overheating. Sounds like yours may be getting stuck sometimes and causing the engine to overheat. (The fan will not come on if the thermostat doesn't open, even after the engine overheats.) Also look for leaks carefully, but the radiator could be getting low as an effect of the overheating rather than a cause.

 

ya i know, still kind of wondering what the hell i was thinking, good idea mk378 I havent been thinking of the thermostat doing that, I think I should maybe replace that too, once I can get the motor running again.