'92 5SFE with no spark - I'm stuck

[rockrat]

Hello, I'm a new member with a 92 Camry that wont start. I have worked on cars for a while but never a master at any of them. Changed engines and fixed issues here and there.

Short story long - The car lost the water pump and ate the timing belt. Neighbor towed it to my garage and asked me to help his son by fixing the car.

New timing belt was put on with a new water pump, seals, gaskets and such. Double and triple checked the timing. Went to start the car and it just turned over without starting. Started the standard checks, fuel, air, spark and compression. Found that the spark was weak at best and non-existent most all of the time. Wont even trigger timing light. Looked over all plugs and connections. Will be back out doing this one more time as I wait to see any responses here.

Started to look through the ignition system. Internal coil pack on this car. Plug wires check in resistance. New distributer cap, new rotor button, new condenser (old one was gooey at the top as though it had been overheated and showed no resistance or charging). Checked the hall effect sensors air gap and resistance at the distributor. Verified voltage to the coil and coil shows proper resistance but, coil is cracked. Igniter module was testing good at the autoparts place, tested it there for about 3 min. Ignition fuses tested good and all others (from the fuse blocks) look good.

I thought about digging out my old oscilloscope and trying to test the hall effect sensors while they are working instead of just checking the resistance.

I have resisted changing the coil after reading a bit on the internet that many folks have fixed similar issues by getting a new distributor which contains a new coil. Hate to change a coil when I might get a new one with a distributer.

Any thoughts?
Many thanks.
rock~

[fenixus]

no gen3 expert here, but i know that any hairline cracks on distributor coil can cause havoc with ignition. up to you if you want to replace coil itself or the whole distributor, either way it seems the cracked coil is your problem.

[djb2]

My guess is the coil, a common failure. It's very compact and doesn't get any cooling air.

I had a bad experience with a Camry coil, leaving us at top of a mountain at 1am after a wedding.

The coil measured *almost* OK, but it turned out to be the culprit. It sometimes would generate a weak yellow spark. That wasn't enough to run, and only caused us to run the battery down trying to start.

[Mike Gerber]

"coil is cracked"

That is most likely your problem. A cracked coil shorts itself to ground on any metal inside the distributor. This is a common Camry problem. Replace the coil and the car should start, assuming you got everything back together properly when doing the timing belt.

Mike

[rockrat]

I called the neighbor and told him about the issue. Honestly, I have had issues with other cars where the coil, ignition module, or other item fails and then soon after the owner is back with a similar issue. The second time it is normally a hall effect sensor. So I installed a new distributer which includes new sensors and a new coil. This solved all the problems except a low idle condition which could be a multitude of things. Currently with low idle, the car does drive nice but this issue will need fixed before returning to the owner. Tomorrow I will finish that.

Thanks for the thoughts. I think this puzzle is about solved.
Cheers!
rock~