Hi guys, I'm having a little trouble with my '91 Accord LX. I just replaced the timing belt and balance shaft belt, water pump, several seals, and performed a valve adjustment. It started immediately and sounded great. I let it run in for about 20 minutes, and was checking a few things under the hood when it just shut off. No abnormal noises, it was as if someone had shut the key off. I checked the timing belt, and it's fine. I pulled one plug and grounded it, and found no spark. With the dwell meter on the negative side of the coil, the meter pulsates when cranking. My best guess is the coil, since the igniter seems to be switching.

Can anyone else offer a suggestion or additional test before I buy an $80 coil? This is my first Honda!

 

check for spark from the coil first, just take the coil wire and ground it and look for spark, if you're getting spark to the distributor cap but not from there it might just be the cap/rotor (cheap fix) if not then try a different cable on the coil (if possible) and make sure that it isn't that cable... my guess is the connection from cap to rotor, either the cable is broke or isn't seated/contacting well....

 

You can check the coil secondary resistance w/ a good VOM. It should be 13.2-19.8 kohms. Primary resistance is very low, 0.6-0.8 ohms, a short or zero resistance for most VOM's.

Make sure you have zero'd the VOM and get a good measurement. It does appear to be a bad coil, but it's difficult to distinquish between bad coil and bad ignitor.

Either is open, your coil is definitely bad.

good luck

 

Secondary resistanceis 10k ohms on my cheap Radio Shack voltmeter. Primary resistance is "zero".

There are two discolored places on the plastic where it appears the coil was arcing to the distributor body. Is this enough to give it the kiss of death?

 

if you get ignitor pulsation at the neg side of the coil while cranking,, it sounds like a bad coil to me as well

 

Well, it was the coil.Installed the new one and it fired right up.

So to recap:
-Arc marks (like little bullseyes) on the coil body (there's a good picture on tegger's website)
-Pulsation measured with a dwell meter at the negative side of the coil with no spark

Good igniter, bad coil.

Thanks for all the help everyone!