no spark from distributor

ASSISTANCE Stock Engine-Bay Components
1

first off i would like to thank anyone that gives me some good information because i have been working on this car for almost a month and spent a lot of money as well.

im an automotive major so im very comfortable working on my own car and have a few brains to pick but i come to you honda-tech looking for some honda heads to bounce some ideas off.

BACK STORY:
car is a 90 da9 with stock “fresh rebuilt” b18a1, it drove perfect tell a month ago when i was driving home from class on a very low tank. It started bogging down as if a plug wire had come undone of as if it wasnt receiving any spark/fuel. i first thought i had ran out of gas and put a few gallons into it and checked for fuel pressure which it had plenty of. tried cranking and thats all it would do, everything turned over but no fire. it sounded kinda like it may have skipped a few teeth on the timing, so i got it home and sure enough the old stretched belt had skipped so i pulled the head to make sure no valves got bent and clean it up and replace valve seals, everything checked out and was properly reinstalled. while the head was off i cleaned up the old main bay loom and replaced a few rotted wires (1 by 1 to make sure all was good, as well as having diagram to double check). i also replaced the battery ground with some 4g and new battery cable with all new terminals.

After i cleaned and re assembled everything i put on a brand new water/tensioner/ tensioner bolt/ timing belt, thermostat and a few other coolant sensors. I reconnected all of the coolant lines and wiring, filled it with coolant and oil and tried starting it up and all it would do is crank AGAIN. broke out the fuel pressure gauge and it checked out, so i checked plugs for spark and nothing. i traced every wire/fuse/ relay that was in the start/ignition circuit and everything was good, so i checked the actual cap and found that i was missing the screw that held the rotor in place so i got a new cap and rotor, must have fallen out in the abyss of my garage. Tossed on the new stuff and cranked, still just cranking. checked for power in the dist. everything was in spec so i checked the coil and it seemed fine but i got a new one from autozone and had them test the icm, all good and still just cranking. while getting very frusterated i double checked the timing again and made sure that i was on TDC of compression stroke and all was good cams were spot on with actual marks not the pully lines. after making sure everything was spot on i got it to fire up very rough for a few seconds but i shut it off because it didnt sound right and i tossed a code 4 for my CKP sensor. i bit the bullet and bought a kragen distributor and put it on yesterday and it seemed to be cranking normally with out this, best way i can describe the sound is “an unbolted exhaust manifold slamming against the bay and block”. it didnt try to fire up and was acting as if it was out of gas (which was very low still) so i put 5 gallons in and tryed cranking it and the “doom sound” was back.

im sorry for the long post with crappy spelling and horrible grammer but im starting to get desperate and very aggrivated due to this being my only car so its difficult to get 2 and from school/work. thank you all in advance for any helpfull insight to getting my baby back on the road

2

this morning i was tinkering with it a little and decided to hook up a test light to the negative coil terminal just to see if it would turn on and off when i cranked it and there was nothing so on the new or old dist. so i guess im back to square 1… any input would be greatly appreciated

3

I’m having trouble following your post but I understand you have no spark right?

But what do you mean here?

Did it start up when you installed the new distributor or just crank differently than before?

4

im sorry i wrote it up quickly before i had to get to class, i meant that i pulled a wire and put a spare on it and grounded it out looking for spark on all the wires and there was none. The same thing happend with a remanufactured distributor. it seems about the same with both old and new dist. I did the light probe test where it is supposed to light up everytime the negative post on the coil gets power but there was no light. ive checked resistance all the way from the dist. to the ecm and everything checks out and has proper voltage. I made sure that my main relay had proper voltage at all terminals and was correctly working and everything checked out so im stumped.

5

Did your crank position sensor code go away when you replaced the distributor? Also, you said you bought a re-manufactured distributor. Did you buy the complete unit, i.e. coil, icm, etc or did you bring these over from the old distributor?

6

i got the whole unit and the car wont start up to even toss a code

7

doesnt need to start to throw a code. have you double checked your connections inside and out of the distributor. make sure your connects are cliped together and the wire pigtail are fully seated in the plugs.

8

i did not know that BLKACK1, thank you for letting me know. But i have tripple checked all of the wires all the way from the ecm to the distributor and even re soldered new wires on most of the wires on/in the distributor because a few of them were rotted and showing wire.

I have checked the mechanical timing atleast 40 times and its spot on. me and my buddy were able to get it to start but when it did it would run very VERY rough and the idle would shoot up to 3-4k and then die. each time we got it to fire up it would toss a code 4 for the crank position sensor. so im guessing a new distributor might be my only option :frowning:

I went to put on the new “reman” distributor and realized the damn thing didnt have a resistor so i took it back because the old one seems pretty shot due to wires being broken almost to the point of no return