Honda Car Forum

My son has a 1990 Honda Civic that won't start. I am living 1,000
miles away for now and can only help via phone. I'm not even sure if
this model has a distributor with rotor, electronic points, or what.
It will turn over, but does not fire. He pulled the plug wires and put
a metal screw in the wires to check for spark. He didn't get any
spark. Can this be a distributor cap, or rotor, or coil, or timing
belt problem? What is most likely on this car? Thanks in advance for
any advice. J.

jdp2012 wrote:
> My son has a 1990 Honda Civic that won't start. I am living 1,000
> miles away for now and can only help via phone. I'm not even sure if
> this model has a distributor with rotor, electronic points, or what.
> It will turn over, but does not fire. He pulled the plug wires and put
> a metal screw in the wires to check for spark. He didn't get any
> spark. Can this be a distributor cap, or rotor, or coil, or timing
> belt problem? What is most likely on this car? Thanks in advance for
> any advice. J.
>
1. check the timing belt by cranking the motor with the oil filler cap
off - cam rotation will be visible if the belt's ok.
2. check the distributor internals. coil is one candidate, igniter the
other. go to tegger.com for how-to's on testing both these items.

No points; an igniter is used instead. And yes, it is a
common cause of non-starts with a no spark condition.
Igniters typically last eight years/100k miles or so.

See http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/faq.html#startrun for
help diagnosing whether it's the igniter or something else.

Take the caveat there about using only OEM parts seriously.
Honda's ignition systems do run best with OEM.

"jdp2012" <jdp2012@gmail.com> wrote
> My son has a 1990 Honda Civic that won't start. I am
> living 1,000
> miles away for now and can only help via phone. I'm not
> even sure if
> this model has a distributor with rotor, electronic
> points, or what.
> It will turn over, but does not fire. He pulled the plug
> wires and put
> a metal screw in the wires to check for spark. He didn't
> get any
> spark. Can this be a distributor cap, or rotor, or coil,
> or timing
> belt problem? What is most likely on this car? Thanks in
> advance for
> any advice. J.
>