coil, pickup, or exciter? - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

catman306 · 10-22-2009, 02:53 PM

My '89 corolla wagon (180,000 mi., 4A-F) got about 1/8 mile this morning and just cut out. Engine would not run. I got it home and my buddy and I checked: no spark. My Haynes manual told me how to check the coil and it appears to be and checks out OK (1.6 ohms and 12.5 Kohms). How can I tell if I need a new pickup, igniter or both? The wires, rotor and distributor cap have less than 10,000 miles on them. Is there any other components I should be looking at? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

***REN69*** · 10-23-2009, 01:57 AM

Fuel pump maybe, other than that maybe any fuses related to the ignition system.

90 GP · 10-23-2009, 03:35 AM

Check to see if timing belt is intact. Remove distributor cap and have someone crank engine to see if rotor turns.

catman306 · 10-24-2009, 06:51 PM

Thanks guys. Turns out that it was the coil. I'm an old car guy and I'm used to the black coils that you might see on a 60s or 70s American car: black can. It's pretty easy to spot cracks on this kind of coil. The Toyota coil in the distributor was something entirely new for me. Although it checked fine with ohm meter, I didn't recognize the obvious cracks, from the left, above the word Toyota and below the part number.