Ok…Yes there was fuel on the plug when I pulled it, what does that mean? Yes the belt turns, I am assuming your talking about the timing belt here. No the tach doesn’t move at all when I crank it. What does that mean? Thank you Welfare for your help, I truly do appreciate it brother.
Everything inside the distributor looks to be in good shape. I am getting power to the distributor but I don’t know how to check if its putting out power. I guess the lack of spark is a good indication that I am not getting power from it. I did buy a used distributor maybe I just need a new new one. I just have put so much money in this car already I need to know how to test the distributor fully before I go and pay $300 for a new one. Please help me out here bro I am running out of answers at a very quick pace as of now you are my only help. Feel free to email me at Tommy8180@gmail.com or even call or text me at 5402954059. I will have time to work on the car on sunday and monday. IF you can help me get it running I will send you $50 to your paypal account or send you a check bro. Thanks for your time sir, sincerely Tommy 
hahaha. not necessary, bud. if the tach remains dead still while cranking, problem is almost certainly the igniter inside the distributor. it is replaceable. the igniter supplies tach signal. that’s the smoking gun, bud
[QUOTE=Tommy818;2277889]… as of now you are my only help. [/QUOTE]Just call him Obi-Wan from now on… 
The problem sounds a bit odd. Isn’t there some way in the manual to check a distributor for electrical connections? Something called ICM input test?? And after that, something like the Lisle spark tester, or similar inline tester, from any autopart store, usually around $10-15… Because on some cars if the timing is way off, the engine will not start, and there is really no reliable way to test spark unless you know the ignition system on a given car.
yes, you can test the icm by check for voltage at each terminal, KOEO. and testing for continuity between each terminal and ground.
the spark tester you are referring to is called an HEI tester. it’s similar to removing the spark plug, inserting it into the boot and grounding to check for spark. the big difference with the HEI is that it’s calibrated to place the same amount of resistance on the ignition as is comparable to inside the cylinder, under cylinder pressure. and that is a huge difference. that .060" gap in the plug is actually comparable to a 3.00" gap when placed under cylinder pressure. a huge difference in resistance. without going too deeply into igntion waveform, that resistance is absolutely necessary in order to ignite the A/F mixture. it’s not just as simple as air+fuel+ignition make boom. there’s some pretty awesome shit going on each time a cylinder fires. One of the processes during ignition is ionization of the af mixture. in order to ionize, the voltage must be very high. without Increased resistance, you can not have increased voltage and ionization will not occur. just look at the primary and secondary coil resistnce specs. we have a 1 ohm spec for primary and around 15Kohm for secondary. that huge amount of resistance in the secondary is what gives us our 20KVolts from just 12volts. and the resistance of spark plug leads? it’s huge. also necessary for raising voltage. and what happens to amperage? it drops way down, relative to the increase in voltage. it’s always a perfect mathematical equation. ohms law.
this is why when you have a fouled plug condition, there is no af ignition. because the gap is shortened and the resistance is lowered. or a cylinder with very low compression. the compression is necessary for it’s resistance.
anyways, going off on a bit of a tangeant there.
but yes, you CAN test the icm. but considering the op has no spark, and no tach signal, i’d say she’s a done deal.
but if you’ve got your DMM handy, run the tests for sure.
who needs a manual when we have Welfare around… :lol:
anyways… the short answer is replace the distributor and call it a day… I spent a week gathering intel from Obi-Welfare and end result of my tweaking a failing unit and using orielly’s coils… was I had a brand new coil I am stuck with and now a brand new distributor in the car… and all is right in my world haha.
TBH, my personal route wuld be to hit the wreckers for either a used oe icm or used oe complete unit. try find one out of a car with the cluster still intact. that way you can see the odo reading. hondas oe distributors are bad enough, but most of the aftermarket ones are even worse. distributor king supposedly sells a decent unit though.
i dunno. im such a cheap bastard though so i’d hit the wreckers for just about anything
I had no luck with the wreckers… the distributores I found were bigger hack jopbs than the one I had… the one I bought has the “Lifetime” warranty so I figure that covers me from here through eternity as long as I do not lose the receipt… being a 1099 contractor… it goes in my 2012 bag of write offs so I’m good I love car maintenance for that aspect haha
and I agree with you on the OE distributors being crap… hell when I was looking at getting a G2 I looked up all the reports at places like edmunds.com and they all said the same thing… great reliable car with the one negative being the distributor unit… OFC that would include just about any honda from this era with the PGM-Fi system
No the tach doesn’t move at all bro…why does that make a difference?
because the tach signal is recieved through the icm. normally, when the engine is cranked, the tach will move slightly.
with no tach movement, no spark, it’s pretty much 2+2, bud. swap in a new icm and you should be GTG
[QUOTE=welfare;2278000] … anyways, going off on a bit of a tangeant there…[/QUOTE]Yeah, meant to say all that myself… uhhh, wait… what was the middle part?
LOL
Thanks for taking the time to type all that. I’ve had it in the past where you could not get a spark the old fashioned way, but plug that tester in, and VOILA (or words to that effect), a spark! Nice to know about the tach tho.
it’s not just a honda thing either. if you look at a wiring diagram for just about any pre 2000 vehicle, you’ll see that tach signal is almost always recieved through an icm or cam sensor. anything in the vicinity of cylinder id. it’s a good little indicator to shoot you in the right direction
…
ok…thanks for all the input…great help. I have replaced the igniter twice now and I have tried to find an answer on where to find or wtf the cylinder on the side if the distributor is. It looks like a capacitor but idk. it has marks of 1.41 on the side. It is connected directly to the icm so I am assuming it got fried. any ideas guys?
i believe the cylinder on the side is a noise condensor. i don’t think it would cause a no spark. so it was the icm you replaced, correct? not the coil, right?
to test the icm, test for voltage at each terminal. then, test for continuity between the blk/ylw wire and the wht/blu
When you pulled out the wires and put them back, did you put them back in the right spots?
Yeah check your firing order.
[QUOTE=djzachtyler;2275020]that was definitely to do with your timing being off. sounds to me like your distributor is the new culprit. what you describe sounds just like what I went through when my teg died a couple weeks back. you could always change the ignition coil. that is usually what fails in a OEM distributor, but for what the cost of a plain distributor is versus cost of a coil just replace the whole thing.
don’t be fooled if you turn it over a couple times and see a spark… a failing coil can throw a spark initially but it will die away until you have no spark at all.
I know if you google around you can find info here and at honda tech as to how to test the coil and wires with a multimeter. that was what I did. theres some good articles that will tell you how to exactly do the resistance tests to narrow issues with the ignition system down. :)[/QUOTE]
I haven’t read the rest of the thread, but he pretty much hit the nail on the head. Mine died when I pulled a plug wire (when I had my LS motor), and it absolutely refused to start. Spark was sporadic, to nearly non existent. It ended up frying just about every component in the distributor except the crank position sensor. I just ordered a brand new OEM distributor, put it on, and never had another issue with the LS. It started and drove fine until I pulled it and upgraded to a JDM B18C.
Yup I finally got it…I bought a brand new distributor and the car starts right up…Now I am back to the original problem of rough idle which probably just requires a little retiming. Thanks for all the help guys…btw don’t waste your time with trying used dizzys for 1st gen tegs…they are very part specific and the td 23u §§§§§ comes in a few different models.
you do need to re-time the engine after swapping to a new distributor. followed by an idle re-learn.