I’ve given you my thorough fuel-and-
spark checklist before, but here’s the

short form:
• Death from fuel starvation tends to
come on gradually and feels like the
car is running out of gas (because it
is), whereas death from lack of spark
tends to be pretty binary.
• If there really is no spark, the coil
isn’t firing, so when you’re cranking
the engine, the tach usually sits
at zero, whereas if there is spark,
the tach will usually bounce while
cranking.
• If you’ve got starting fluid with you,
pull off the air cleaner and spray it
into the carb or throttle body while
someone is cranking the engine
and holding the throttle partially
open. If the car starts, runs for a
few seconds, then dies, you’ve got
spark, which means you almost
certainly have a fuel delivery
problem. This could be the fuel
pump, a clogged fuel filter or mesh
screen, a stuck needle valve on
the carb float, or a cracked rubber
line causing the pump to suck air
instead of fuel.
• If you have no starting fluid to test
with and if the car dies but, after
sitting for a short while, starts and
runs only to die again, the problem is likely a
clogged fuel filter that gets unclogged when
fuel is no longer pushing sediment up against
the screen.
• If you’ve ruled out fuel, the odds are
strong there’s no spark, but you need to
check. On post-mid-1990-ish cars with

coil-on-plug ignitions, you can’t
check for spark directly, but on
old-school distributor ignitions
(which are the ones where spark
often fails), you can.
• If you have an inexpensive test
light, connect the lead to the “+”
coil terminal, stick the probe on
the “-“ terminal (or switch them;
it doesn’t matter), and have
someone crank the engine. The
test light should flash, indicating
that the coil is being triggered
to fire. If it doesn’t, odds are
strong that either the points aren’t
opening, the condenser is bad or
ungrounded, or one of the wires
has pulled or broken off the coil.
• If the test light does flash, pull
the thick wire out of the center of

the distributor cap, use rubber-
insulated pliers to hold it 1⁄4-inch

from a good ground, and have
someone crank the engine. If
there’s no spark there, the coil
may be bad (is being triggered but
isn’t firing properly), though in my
humble opinion this is unlikely.
• If there is spark from that center
coil wire, test for spark at the plug wires
the same way. If there’s no spark there, the
fault likely lies in the distributor cap, rotor, or
wires.
• This simple troubleshooting tree is highly
effective in triaging the problem as spark
or fuel, and determining the cause.