I'm having trouble getting my car to start. I've narrowed the problem down to not getting spark. The thing is that only a few days ago it was just the opposite. I had spark but my fuel pump wasn't running. Only after I replaced the pump did i lose spark.

My question is since this car did have an after market alarm on it at one time, could there be a killswitch that could cause this? And if so, where and what color is that wire or wires

thanks for any advice you can give

 

By the way, it's a 91 accord auto

 

if it was a standard aftermarket alarm that was put in like normal the NO there is not a kill switch that would do this, the normal alarm goes to a relay that interupts the power from going to your starter relay/solenoid. If someone got in to the wiring and added a totally custom rig then you may have a kill for the fuel pump, but to kill spark that would be ballsy since any extra wire in the signal path could pickup or emit rf interferance ( the whinny noise in an old radio due to older systems not being sheilded).

as for color of wire it could be anything since what your talking about would be totally custom. also you would have probably noticed if you flipped a switch that you didn't know what it was hooked to. these are probably 2 unrelated problems that just happened together.

what type of alarm was it? and about how old?

 

The alarm is kinda old it's a Patriot 300, I dont think the company even exist anymore. And it was installed by the shop over on Dale Mabry (can't remeber the name) in 93-94.

I plan on reinstalling the alarm just to see what happen, mayber I'll find shorted wire or something

Thanks

 

if it was a shp it may have been buzz off, and if it was then they would have done as little as possible to get the job done. for the spark are you not getting spark at the plug tip? the spark plug boot? or the dizzy terminals? also is it all 4 not sparking or is at least one sparking? depending on where you get spark, if any, that will tell you where the breakdown is. I would check a wiring diagram to see which wires give a signal and power to your dizzy. then check those wires for power, if no power then check the other end of the wire ( ecu ) to see if power is there. it may be a broken wire or a bad ecu, or a bad dizzy. but since the only part of your engine that the alarm has anything to do with is the starter kill relay I would give 100:1 that it isn't the alarm.

the alarm hooks to +12v, ground, your horn (option), parking lights, siren (option), door trigger, dome light (option), valet switch, led, starter kill relay ( which itself hooks 2 terminals to the starter wire, 1 from the key and 1 to the starter, then 1 terminal to +12v, and 1 to the alarm for -ground input). and that is the alarm at its basic, and since you say its old I would say it may even be easier than that.

If you want the alarm in your car to have an alarm thats all good its one of the first steps I tell people to do when they get a ride without one, just don't expect it to fix the problem.

 

I had the same problem on my civic and it was the dizzy. First I took out the alarm and still nothing. So i took it to Car Tunes audio and had them look at it and they said it was the dizzy so I replaced it and worked fine.

Just my 2 cents

 

thats what I'm thinking, normally the plug wires wouldn't give, and the signal wires don't have much that could rub through the wireloom and insulation, so I am thinking something in the dizzy as well.

 

To my astonishment the one thing I thought was a sure thing failed on me. The rotor that I bought from Honda was missing the clip of metal that hold it to the distributor shaft. It rotates freely about 20 degrees. Since I had spark before, and now i don't I think that this faulty rotor fried my ignitor and hopefully that's all it fried.