I have read many threads and forums and can't get any fire out of a 1990 Accord.

1990 accord 5 speed 201252 miles

The car is my mother in laws. It burnt a valve so my brother in law put a rebuilt head on it and then could'nt get any spark. He replaced the coil with no luck, so now I am working on it.

I am a capable wrench. I have the Haynes manual for it.

I did all the checks on the coil and igniter and everthing seemed fine. The pickup had a crack so I got a new distributor off of Ebay. No fire. I did all the checks Deserthonda said but when i put the test lite on the coil neg side and a good ground, have someone crank the engine, if the test lite pulses you got a bad coil ..if it does not pulse you got a bad ignitor ...
the test light did not flash.
I fond a site to test the igniter
http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/ignit...r-testing.html
and the igniter chcked out good.
I have checked the ECM fuses and grounds but no luck.
I think my brother in law caused it when he replaced the head, but don't know what to do next.
HELP
Dave

 

Is the coil resistance ok?

You probably checked this, but make sure that the distributer was put on right when the head was put back on. It could be 180 off, unless it's keyed one way; I don't remember exactly...

How does that cap and rotor look? Also, make sure you're not losing the spark through a bad coil wire. I had an old honda silverwing motorcycle that lost all of the juice through a wire that ran close to the cyl head. Just never made it to the spark. Hope this helps!

 

All new distributor including cap and rotor. new coil resistance OK. New igniter OK. Internal coil, no wire. Distributor keyed one way.

Thanks
Dave

 

I just got my 90 Accord running this evening, I got a used distributor but it was faulty. I was loaned a good one to try to see if the problem was in the distributor. Well the car started with the first crank, so I swapped his coil with mine and put my own distributer back in. Used the car all evening works great again.
Brian

 

I GOT IT!!!!!
The 2" ground strap on the thermostat housing was not attatched!
A good link for troubleshooting is

http://techauto.te.funpic.org/ignition.php

I hope others may learn from this.
Dave