Honda Car Forum

> If my new alternator was bad, would that prevent the car from starting?
No, because the alternator does not actually charge the battery
until after the motor is running, an engine will run for quite some
time on the battery alone

> Is it possible my ECU is fried?
Possible but unlikely, it usually takes a bad input signal to
fry electronics, which you would not have created by pulling plugs

> Would a bad ground prevent the car from starting?
Yes but if you have spark this is not the case

I'm not sure how you would do it in this model, but it may be worth
checking for air flow. I cant think of any way that pulling a plug
could permanently disable an engine, aside from creating a loose
connection to the spark plug itself. This cant be what is happening if
you are getting a spark though

"Josh" <shannon_joshua@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1166875300.951550.43600@i12g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
> I cant think of any way that pulling a plug
> could permanently disable an engine, aside from creating a loose
> connection to the spark plug itself. This cant be what is happening if
> you are getting a spark though
>

At least in Honda engines, opening a spark lead can zap the coil. My own
experience in that is visible in
http://tegger.com/hondafaq/badsecond...al-arcing.html (d'oh!) In that
case there was no detectable spark, but the damage can be less so that a
spark can be seen but it won't produce enough voltage to fire the plugs
under compression. If the coil can produce a half inch spark that ought to
do the job.

Mike

Michael Pardee wrote:
> "Josh" <shannon_joshua@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1166875300.951550.43600@i12g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
>> I cant think of any way that pulling a plug
>> could permanently disable an engine, aside from creating a loose
>> connection to the spark plug itself. This cant be what is happening if
>> you are getting a spark though
>>
>
> At least in Honda engines, opening a spark lead can zap the coil. My own
> experience in that is visible in
> http://tegger.com/hondafaq/badsecond...al-arcing.html (d'oh!) In that
> case there was no detectable spark, but the damage can be less so that a
> spark can be seen but it won't produce enough voltage to fire the plugs
> under compression. If the coil can produce a half inch spark that ought to
> do the job.
>
> Mike
>
>
that's one of the most impressively perfect examples i've ever seen for
component failure like this!

fascion wrote:
> I've posted this question before, and tried all of the suggestions with
> no luck, so here I am again.
>
> 1995 Honda Civic LX, manual transmission, fuel injected, 150k mi
>
> The engine was running rough this spring, so it was figured that one of
> the cylinders wasn't firing. To test which was the dead cylinder, the
> plug wires were pulled one at a time.

When you pulled these ignition wires, what steps did you take to ensure
that current from the ignition coil, which normally arcs across a
sparkplug gap, has somewhere to go?