Car crapped out, won't start.

[Cheeseybacon]

OK folks, some of you might remember the automotive issues I had with my car's coolant system a few months ago. Well I'm having more trouble again and I'm out of ideas. A little bit of background: I have a 1995 Honda Civic DX. The engine has right around ~210,000 miles on it. At 136,000 miles I replaced the headgasket, water pump, timing belt, etc all that good stuff. It went without a coolant change up until a few months ago when my heater started to crap out.

Most recently I was driving along when my car made a very brief sputter then died completely, and I rolled to stop. The car would not start up again and hasn't started since. The starter has no problem turning the motor and I am not receiving any diagnostic fault codes. I've been tinkering around with it here and there over the course of this week and this is what I have checked/determined:

- I had my car die unexpectedly like this last summer and the ECU fuse was the culprit, so naturally this is the first thing I checked. The fuse to the ECU is OK.

- I disconnected the fuel line from the fuel rail and cranked the engine for a second or two causing a big mess of fuel to spray everywhere. The engine is definitely getting fuel.

- Thinking that my ignition system might be to blame I replaced my plugs, wires, cap and rotor. It had been eons since I did this anyway, so I figured now is as good a time as any. Sadly, that didn't help. One area of concern was the 4th spark plug, which had a decent coat of oil on it. The other 3 plugs seemed to otherwise have normal wear on them.

- A co-worker claimed that even if the fuel pump was working correctly that the fuel injectors might not be and that the best way to determine this was to spray some ether into the intake. He claimed that if something is wrong with the fuel system, spraying ether in there will at least start and run the engine for a second or two. I tried the Ether with no luck.

Also, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I had snapped my timing belt. Afterall, there's about 74,000 miles on it now. It's reasonable to expect it could have died by now, right? I popped off the belt cover and took a look. Strangely, the belt looked like brand new and it was tighter than a bull's ass, so I can't imagine that it slipped, let alone broke completely.

So this is where I am at the moment: Timing belt looks OK, I'm getting fuel, air obviously isn't a problem, and I'm assuming the ignition system is working OK with the introduction of all the tune-up parts. No fault codes, starter works fine.


I'm out of ideas. What do you guys think?

[ar15jules]

Hmmmm, fuel and spark???????? That makes a fire in my book. I am clueless, even if your belt is taking a shit, you would start. Oily plug though? Did you check compression on the cylinders?
Sorry for the lack of help,
Jules

[sluggie24]

Do you know for a fact that it is getting spark? Pull a wire and crank the engine while holding the wire end next to a piece of metal on the engine that would be a good ground. Older Hondas are known for the distributors going bad causing no spark. When you changed the distributor cap was there alot of brown dust in there? This would be a good indicator of the distributor going bad.

[RocketFoot]

My car crapped out this morning, too. I have it narrowed down to moisture in the distributor cap. I opened the hood and saw a ton of snow that blew in from the back of the hood during the snow and wind last night. It is packed all over the dist cap and back of the engine. All I can do is wait for it to dry out and try to start it. All it will do now is turn over...

[DaveM55]

My vehicle wouldn't run today either. It starts but won't idle. It was just a dirty idle valve, I have to clean it about every six months.

Wasn't a good day for PaFOA vehicles.

[P-11 shooter]

Don't what's wrong with your car........



but in keeping with the trend I just found out my mom just put my dad's pick-up into a guardrail.

So if it starts FOR GODS SAKE DON'T DRIVE IT ANYWHERE!

[texinteg]

Check spark first. Then get back to us. I have had this happen on my acura. It ended up being the module in my distributer.

[P-11 shooter]

Come to think of it I knew a guy with an acura with the same problem.

Ended up being a sensor. So it could be something like that. I think is was a cam position sensor.

Chesk spark first. It may be the distributor module. I've had those crap out on me as well.

[Cheeseybacon]

Do you know for a fact that it is getting spark? Pull a wire and crank the engine while holding the wire end next to a piece of metal on the engine that would be a good ground. Older Hondas are known for the distributors going bad causing no spark. When you changed the distributor cap was there alot of brown dust in there? This would be a good indicator of the distributor going bad.

I forgot to mention this, glad you did.

When I first pulled the distributor cap I noticed a few brownish/rust-like patches on the rod coming out of the distributor that the rotor mounts onto as well as on the rotor itself. I figured it was rust more than anything and actually ended up whipping out one of those circular battery terminal cleaners and scraping away a fair bit of the brown dust/rust/whatever it is before I installed the new rotor. That rod however, is where all that brown crap ends. As far as I can tell, the rest of the distributor is as clean as can be with no brown dust to be found.

I guess I'll see if I can't get a spark somehow. Whats the best way to do this? The ends of the wires are all recessed inside a molded piece of rubber. I should be able to stick a screw driver or some other metal object up in there and position it next to a ground point, shouldn't I?

[P-11 shooter]

yeah, i've used the screwdriver trick before and it works. Be shure you got a good ground before you write it off as no spark.

I've had a car crap out from a distributor module. And I've seen a acura crap out due to bad sensors too.