Help....87 Accord dies

[IdahoRodeo]

My friends 87 Accord runs perfectly until it gets warm. Once warm it dies and will not start for ~5-10 minutes as it cools. Starts back up and runs great for a few minutes and dies again. Almost seem like vapor lock. If I try to restart immediately it will sputter for a few seconds and die then all it will do is turn over like there is no fuel or spark until it cools. Both fuel filters have been changed. Both were in decent condition.

[mpumas]

Possible ignition coil. You will need to do some checks when it won't start like: hook a timing light to a spark plug wire and see if you are getting spark. After that test, tell us your results. Is it a LXi?

[IdahoRodeo]

I ran the car, checked to make sure the timing light was firing. It was. Ran the car until it died and then tried starting it. It cranked and cranked,,,,,no timing light firing. Let the car cool, just for sanity sake, car cooled, started and obviosly timing light fired. Ran car until it died, cranked it over,,,,,no timing light firing. Moved the timing light pickup to the distributer cap, same scenario, same on the coil. Thanks for the help, I will update after I find a coil.

[mpumas]

Before you buy the coil, the next thing to check is the ignitor and ECU. Wait for the car to die then disconnect the coil and hook a light between the wires that were hooked to the coil. Crank over the car and look for the light to blink. If it does, then the coil is bad.

[IdahoRodeo]

Well after my email reply to you I decided to learn a bit more about the accord ignition system before I proceeded. I put an inductive pickup timing light on the ignition control module output to the coil. When cold the light was right on queue. When the motor heated up and died so did the timing light. I waited until it cooled again, disconnected the wire from the coil, cranked over the motor and the timing light was live again. An ignition cotrol module was $252, I got the whole distributor with the module for $186. Car runs great. Oh, and Murphy's law is also alive and well. When I got done running the car for a 1/2 hour of so, I shut it off to check oil etc. When I went to start it back up the starter solenoid was not engaging. The starter just spun and spun. What a week. Thanks again.