A 94 Toyota Celica 1.8l ST problem

gstjoker · 04-13-2009

Other than being a dsm this time, I'm wondering if maybe some of you car guru's can help answer this:

I got a 94 Toyota Celica ST I think it is. 1.8l only. Nothing special, all stock. I was driving on the road one day and it died while I was driving. Couple weeks prior to that, I replaced the old altenator to a new one due to a burning spell from the altenator. Tested and fully charged the battery and it was still good. A fried of mine thinks it's not getting no spark at all and it might have something to do with the coil,distributer or something like that? Can anyone throw some ideas as to what I need to do to get this fixed?

Any helpful ideas/suggestions will be much appreciated.

iceminion · 04-13-2009

I have lots of experience with the 1.6L 2.0L and 2.2L toyota engines.

Assuming that these engines are the same

Do the basics:

compression : compression tester, 5 minutes, requires friend to turn the key.
spark : screwdriver, 1 minute, requires friend to turn the key.
fuel : take spark plug out, turn car over, place cloth/paper towel near sparkplug hole, sniff once you have turned it over several times, should be soaked with fuel.

with all 3 you have a working car, so please test and get back to us.

gstjoker · 04-13-2009

Thanks iceminion, I'll give that a try. Although, I think I remember my buddy doing your 2nd method or atleast it seemed like it. He took out the spark plug wire and had me try to turn over the car while he held the spark plug wire next to the engine to see if it would make a spark but nothing happend. I will still give your other ideas a try and see how it goes. Thanks.

iceminion · 04-14-2009

It is a good idea to try with a couple spark plug wires to verify that you are no longer getting spark.

Assuming that you do NOT have spark, replace the whole distributor, it contains crank/cam sensors within, so you are hitting alot of birds with one stone.

You can get em at the junkyard for very very cheap.

If your distributor being replaced doesnt fix it, still no spark, then you gotta dig deeper, maybe the whole ECU, but since they never go out, you can find them by the dozens at junkyards.