Last Wed, I had a bad experience with my civic. For the first time in 2 years, she left me stranded. All the suddon, as i was sitting at a stop light, the car just quits on me. Projekteg and I went to trouble shoot it, we discovered there was no spark. We discovered this by taking out a spark plug, then putting the plug back into the wire, but not with the plug in the hole(if that makes any sense)-no pictures of this, but could come up with some if someone wants them...anywas- then we put a screwdriver to the tip of the spark plug, cranked it, and no spark. So we scrated our heads, and couldn't figure it out. so I come home, talk to asaspicer online and he said, he had the same problem and it turned out to be his coil. So i started flipping through my haynes manual and found there was a way to test the coil. -i talked to a few more people and they had no idea it could be tested(the reason for the thread) so my car sitting at the gas station, i went up there, and pulled the dizzy. brought it home, and tested the coil:
after the story that goes with it, here are the pictures and the write up

you have your distributer-(distributer cap removed). the black part with the spring is your coil...


you will need to disconnect these two screws, these will be your testing points. You will need to use a multi-meter to do this.(set on ohms)-thanks projekteg. Place the neg side of the multi meter in the spring. then, you will place the the positive side of the multi-meter on the positive side of the coil, then on the neg side, with the neg side of the multi-meter still inside the spring...



as you can see, mine tested at like 11.15-11.19. according to my haynes you want these numbers to be between 12.8-19.0
mine tested bad, as you can see. so i went to autozone, got a new one, and put it in, it solved the problem! -after scratching my head and all of that good ----, the testing, putting the new one in, and getting everything put back together took me about 2 hours or so...


I made this thread, because after I had figured out how to test the coil, and talking to a few people, they had no idea that the coil could be tested. so i decided to take pictures as iw as doing this...and make a write up on it. it was very easy to do, and saved me about $70 by replacing everything....the local rice shop wanted $100 to fix my coil back to good...

 

finally a post from you that doesnt end wit "+1"
nice write up tho

 

yeah, sometimes i can come up with a decent thread or 2.
and the +1 just goes with the "#1 post -----" title.

 

so why couldnt this test be done w/ the wires plugged onto the terminals? :P

you tested each terminal w/ the + side of the meter and got the same readings each time?

 

yeah, i thought the same thing, but figured both are reading under what they should be...and accually i had tested it before i decided to take pictures of everything. the first time i tested it, it came out to like 8.something and 11. something

and why do you disconnect them, well because then you are testing both the ecm and the coil because they are connected :P

hey, i learned something!

 

 

Dont forget about it being hooked to the igniter

 

that matters? *deletes all posts pertaining to my stupidity*

 

good write up! ill have to test my many coils when i get a chance! Good ----!