No spark, possible ignition relay problem

RAMONMILIAN

MEMBER
1995 TOYOTA COROLLA
1.8L
4 CYL
2WD
AUTOMATIC
300,000 MILES

MY car stalled out the other day. I had been running on a glued ignition coil because the new one came defective out of the box, so I replaced the coil on the side of the road and she still would not start. Got her to the shop were we tried, thinking it may have been the fuel pump, spraying carburetor cleaner through the throttle body and nothing (so we ruled out the fuel pump and coil). I have no spark which is leading me to believe that either the ignition module is bad or the ignition relay. Help!

Thanks!

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

Hi Ramon,

I attached how your ignition system works. Basically you need to go back through the system and see where you have power and where you do not. When you are cranking, you should have voltage going into the coil (coil is inside the distributor). This is where I would start. If you have power here then your relay and wiring up to this point are good. However, if you don't have power coming out then most likely the coil is your issues.

The fact that it is glued, I would test this first. Keep in mind what the coil does. The ECM interrupts the current to the primary circuit and this creates a spike that the secondary delivers to the plugs through the distributor.

If you have no spark, then most likely your coil is the issue assuming you have power getting to it. However, if you just have a weak spark, this could be an igniter because if it is not interrupting the signal then you are not getting the spike and it just delivers the weaker spark. This commonly gets misdiagnosed as a coil issue.

Please let me know if you have more questions or let me know what you find with this and I can assist more if needed. Thanks

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