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Your car can "lose" its spark for many reasons. The ignition system that delivers your spark is a linear one, like a chain, and if any of those individual links go bad you won't get a spark in your cylinder.
On a distributor system:
Something turns your distributor rotor (usually gear from camshaft), this rotor "sends" the spark to the different spark plug wires as it makes contact with pins in the distributor cap which the wires are connected to. the spark plug wire goes to your spark plug.
On distributorless systems:
instead of a mechanical gear/rotor setup, an computer tells an ignition coil when to "fire" to send the spark down the wire to the plug.
If one cylinder on a car is not sparking, then it may be a bad plug or wire, or another bad component down the "chain".
If none of the plugs are getting spark, it is most likely not the plugs or wires, but rather something in the cap/rotor or the ignition coil/computer.
Easy ways to diagnose issues with spark:
-buy $5 in-line spark tester from parts store and plug it in to each plug, one by one while starting it to find the bad one
-spray water on wires with spray bottle to see if they short out or short to each other
-take off distributor cap and look at rotor, if it's worn and corroded, change it
-tune up the car since it probably needs it anyway
-R. Mesyef
Wiki User
∙ 12y ago
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