Honda Car Forum

My Accord won't start and I am not getting any spark from the coil.
Fule pump is running, ECM is doing it's self check on start up, no
check engine light, and I have fuel pressure. Before I tear the
distributor apart, I wanted to know if there was a way to test the
voltage comming from the ignitor to the coil. I have an external coil
with a 4 prong connector.

____|---|___
| |
| A B |
| C D |
|__________|

A - Yellow
B - Black w/ yellow stripe
C - Empty
D - Black w/ white stripe

Which terminals do I test to check the voltage from the ingitor to the
coil?
Thanks for the help.

It seems to me coils do not die completely all of a sudden. More typically, for
an old coil the coil will fail after the car is warmed up, but then when the car
cools down (an hour or two?), the car will start again. This is based on my own
experience as well as general reading. Old coils are sensitive to temperature.

An ignitor on the other hand will not give a warning, as far as I know and have
seen.

Procedures for checking ignitor and coil:
Go to www.autozone.com , click on "Repair Info," follow the pointers to the
repair guides, put in your car's info as prompted, eventually click on "Engine
Electrical," "Electronic Ignition," then "Diagnosis and Testing."

Since as Dan said you have to remove the ignitor, if you use a magic marker and
draw a line from left to right as you stand at the front of the car) and across
the distributor housing to its base, then you can re-install the distributor
housing and likely not mess up the timing as long as you re-align the mark you
made with the magic marker.

(Note that the distributor housing has three bolts attaching it to its base. The
bolt holes are designed so the whole distributor housing may be rotated to
adjust the timing.)

With Autozone, two other good sites for info on ignitors are:

http://www.markl.f9.co.uk/howto/elec...er/igniter.htm

http://www.gcw.org.uk/rover/igniter.htm

"Nick C" <gmt77@msn.com> wrote
> My Accord won't start and I am not getting any spark from the coil.
> Fule pump is running, ECM is doing it's self check on start up, no
> check engine light, and I have fuel pressure. Before I tear the
> distributor apart, I wanted to know if there was a way to test the
> voltage comming from the ignitor to the coil. I have an external coil
> with a 4 prong connector.
>
> ____|---|___
> | |
> | A B |
> | C D |
> |__________|
>
> A - Yellow
> B - Black w/ yellow stripe
> C - Empty
> D - Black w/ white stripe
>
> Which terminals do I test to check the voltage from the ingitor to the
> coil?
> Thanks for the help.

"Caroline" <caroline10027remove@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<b%H3d.7794$n16.7788@newsread2.news.atl.earth link.net>...
> It seems to me coils do not die completely all of a sudden. More typically, for
> an old coil the coil will fail after the car is warmed up, but then when the car
> cools down (an hour or two?), the car will start again. This is based on my own
> experience as well as general reading. Old coils are sensitive to temperature.
>
> An ignitor on the other hand will not give a warning, as far as I know and have
> seen.
>
> Procedures for checking ignitor and coil:
> Go to www.autozone.com , click on "Repair Info," follow the pointers to the
> repair guides, put in your car's info as prompted, eventually click on "Engine
> Electrical," "Electronic Ignition," then "Diagnosis and Testing."
>
> Since as Dan said you have to remove the ignitor, if you use a magic marker and
> draw a line from left to right as you stand at the front of the car) and across
> the distributor housing to its base, then you can re-install the distributor
> housing and likely not mess up the timing as long as you re-align the mark you
> made with the magic marker.
>
> (Note that the distributor housing has three bolts attaching it to its base. The
> bolt holes are designed so the whole distributor housing may be rotated to
> adjust the timing.)
>
> With Autozone, two other good sites for info on ignitors are:
>
> http://www.markl.f9.co.uk/howto/elec...er/igniter.htm
>
> http://www.gcw.org.uk/rover/igniter.htm
>
> "Nick C" <gmt77@msn.com> wrote
> > My Accord won't start and I am not getting any spark from the coil.
> > Fule pump is running, ECM is doing it's self check on start up, no
> > check engine light, and I have fuel pressure. Before I tear the
> > distributor apart, I wanted to know if there was a way to test the
> > voltage comming from the ignitor to the coil. I have an external coil
> > with a 4 prong connector.
> >
> > ____|---|___
> > | |
> > | A B |
> > | C D |
> > |__________|
> >
> > A - Yellow
> > B - Black w/ yellow stripe
> > C - Empty
> > D - Black w/ white stripe
> >
> > Which terminals do I test to check the voltage from the ingitor to the
> > coil?
> > Thanks for the help.

Having just spent a very frusttrating three weeks fixing our God-daughter's
1990 Civic I can say that the info at:
http://www.gcw.org.uk/rover/igniter.htm
was very helpfull in ruling out the ignitor. His simple LED tester allowed
me to check for "firing" pulses from the ECM. Do NOT use a testlamp!
Either a commercial logic probe, an oscilloscope, or a LED tester are the
only safe ways to test for this signal! By testing for the input siganl,
and the output of the ignitor one can decide if the ignitor or the coil
is bad.
Terry

Terry wrote:
<...>
> Having just spent a very frusttrating three weeks fixing our
> God-daughter's 1990 Civic I can say that the info at:
> http://www.gcw.org.uk/rover/igniter.htm
> was very helpfull in ruling out the ignitor.

As the author of said article. thanks for the comments...

> His simple LED tester
> allowed
> me to check for "firing" pulses from the ECM. Do NOT use a testlamp!
> Either a commercial logic probe, an oscilloscope, or a LED tester are
> the
> only safe ways to test for this signal! By testing for the input
> siganl,
> and the output of the ignitor one can decide if the ignitor or the
> coil
> is bad.

....and it only takes one minute to do all the necessary checks to come
to that conclusion.

I think I had better make a pointed comment of that 'no filament lamps'
thing in the article just in case someone not so clued up as Terry tries
it and pops the ECM!


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