1.8 L no spark

[CamarosRsweet94]

I picked up a '93 Ford Escort LX-E with the 1.8L DOHC and it does not spark. I have no spark coming from the ignition coil, I know a guy who said that the optical pickup in the distributors are known for going bad in those motors so I got a different distributor that was pulled from a working engine. Still no spark. I noticed something with the ignition coil so I replaced it just to be safe. Still no spark. I tested the ignition module (igniter) and condenser on a working car and both performed fine. Now I am all out of ideas. I have 28 mV going to the ignition module and 12 V going to the coil. 0.1 ohms resistance between both the engine and body grounds and the negative on the battery. Also I have 20K ohms resistance between the primary side of the ignition coil and the rotor contact on the inside of the cap. Also have 12 V going to the distributor on 2 wires and 0 V on the other 2. I also replaced the coil wire just to be safe. I am all out of ideas, any help would be appreciated

[Doug Tatham]

Did you recheck the timing after installing the new distributer to make sure it wasn't 180 off. I know this is obvious, but it seems like you tried everything else.

[CamarosRsweet94]

Having the distributor turned would only make the timing off, there is no spark whatsoever. However, I was looking for a possible short and unplugged a connector of some sort that fixed the spark problem but created a no fuel problem. Guess I will continue to search for the cause of this short.

[Doug Tatham]

I take it from what you said that you actually tested for a spark at the plug rather than it just doesn't fire. I found a link about optical pickup troubleshooting that may help:

http://www.allpar.com/fix/optical.html