Desert, or anyone else, would his car run if the spark was being sent at 30 instead of 15? Does anyone know what the advance would be if he hooked up the timing light to the wires for 2, 3, and 4?

Is it possible that two of the ignition wires are switched at the distributor cap?

vitality

What sensors and parts have you replaced since the problem has started? Were the CKP and the TDC sensors replaced?

You can test the resistance of those sensors at the connector, plug it back in, then test the resistance at the plug for the ECU. They should be pretty close. If one of the readings is off, then you basically found the bad wire. That shop manual I referenced you to in my first post has the specs for those sensors and pin locations on the ECU. You can test those pretty quickly if you are planning on freezing the ECU to troubleshoot problems.

I think that the ECU also uses RPMs to activate the ignitor. I think that the ignitor sends the RPM signal to the ECU (it definitely sends it to the tach). Was the distributor replaced and do you have the old one?

 

mechanical timing must be SPOT ON for ign. timing to be even close.

 

car does run . car doesent ping. the marks are correct, we've raised the piston manually to make sure it's at tdc.
im not lying when i say at idle the car runs 30 degrees out, if revved you cant even see the timing marks. it's majorly advanced,
im still wondering myself how the car is actually running. any sensor that hasnt been replaced has been electronically tested.
my pops is an electronics engineer with more than 20 years of experiance, and has his auto-mechanic certification, and did the testing
himself. the reason this car (probably) runs is the fuel injection is timed by the same sensors as the ignition timing.

 

this is going to sound like a stupid question but are you certain that you are checking the timing off the #1 cylinder? Pop the distributor cap off, raise the #1 cyl to TDC and make sure that your cap is pointing at the #1 plug/wire, that should confirm that at least the distributor is timed/set in there correctly...

 

something isn't right, it's not making sense.

where do you live? bring it to my shop(chicago)

 

He lives in Ft. Myers, FL. Is it possible the key fell out of the shaft the crank pulley is on? I know it can be removed. If the timing light is connected to plug wire #1 and the car runs ok... then the timing marks should be somewhere in the vicinity of the pointer on the t-belt cover. Vitality, it may be possible that the car is visually out of time by 30 deg., but the car would not run if it were literally 30 deg. out. I don't think it would even run if it were 5 deg. off of 15 deg. BTDC idle.

 

Ignition Timing at Idle

I realize this thread is old, but I was having the same problem and came across it. It helped me out but since there was no exciting conclusion, I figured I'd post mine.

1996 honda accord lx, 2.2 non-vtec approx. 245,000 miles

The car runs like a champ, but failed smog (in CA) for timing only. Timing was running 28 - 30 deg btdc. I quickly discovered that the method in the maintenance manual wasn't working (jumping the service connector and turning my brand new distributor). I had the mechanical timing checked by a guy who is a bit more...mechanical than I and he confirmed that the timing belt was correctly installed and the engine base timing was correct. After about a week of testing, reading everything I could get my hands on, replacing the majority of the ignition system, swapping in a "known good ecu", and buying a sweet live-data scanner I realized a couple of things:

1st, I need to start saving up for a new engine. The compression across all cylinders is 120 +/- 10 psi. Pretty weak, but not the cause of my timing concerns.
2nd, Open and closed loop operation is a very important thing to understand in troubleshooting.
- > http://www.ej9.ru/civic/book/chpt_01.pdf This somewhat random site gave me a lot of info that helped me begin to think logically about what could be causing the timing to be so high, even with a normal idle. There are about 37 different documents that cover PGMFI and a host of other tasty topics.

And lastly, and most importantly, my sweet new scanner pointed out that my TPS was sitting at 12% at idle. In the shop manual it says approximately 10% but since it was the only thing that looked out of spec, I gave it a try. I utilized the write up by breeza and it served me well. - > DIY: Calibrating the Voltage on the TPS - Honda-Tech

I had a hard time believing the sensor was causing all the mischief since it was not throwing a code and it was riveted in place...but it was. After proper adjustment, the ignition timing immediately settled into a very reasonable 15 deg. btdc at idle.
I passed smog yesterday, even with my tired old engine caughing up oil, lol.
And that was my exciting conclusion to essentially the same issue.