Car is deader than Elvis!

Well recently my car has been acting very sluggish, 2 weeks ago It backfired for the first time, and a week or so ago it failed smog miserably. Yesturday on my way to work I started hearing a really abnormal sound. At first I thought it was my stereo giving feedback, so i shut it off and detatched the faceplate, and still the noise persisted; it sounded like a sort of rapid tinny dripping and crackling sound. shortly afterward when the noise got louder the car would jerk violently like it was running out of gas when it was in gear. Although putting it in neutral stopped the jerking, it had no govern over the noise. The problem seemed to go away however when I put in more gas (it was close to empty so I though I may have just run low prematurly, since it has been acting a bit funny lately) I popped my hood w/ engine on to find that my heatshield over the headers was missing a bolt and was rattling. I figured that may be the cause of the noise, so I took it home (with no problems) and put a new bolt on the heatshield. All was fine or so I thought until this morning on my way to work, when the noise again started, this is when I realized that it was not a loose bolt, but something very wrong with my engine. As soon as I hit an incline the jerking started again, but I made it to work ok. @ lunch I went out to my car and turned it on: immediatly the noise started very loud now and followed by noticible pinging. I shut off my car and told my boss what was up, so he let me drive his supercharged MR2 to lunch, which was the only positive part of the day, it all gets worse from here.

Anyway, today was the last working day of the month at my RV dealership, where I am the Warranty Adminstrator, which means we needed to get our numbers up (aka cash out all the repair orders so we can collect on them) I put in a 14 hour shift, not leaving work till 10pm. Knowing that my car was hosed, I had a coworker follow me up to my house in his Jeep Wrangler, and brought along a tow chain in case my car broke down. About halfway up the hill to my house (I live in the santa cruz mountains) the noise came back, for the last time, after about 30 seconds of noise my car gave its last few jerks and died quitetly. We hooked up the tow chain and pulled it the rest of the way up Battle Mountain to my house, where it sits waiting for my to diag the problem. From what Ive gathered (and Ive discussed to 4 techs @ work about it too) I think it either a problem with the fuel system (injectors, filter, pump, etc) or timing or both, but its all just speculation @ this point. So what im going to do is either chuck the engine and swap in a vtec one like ive been planning on, or buy a GSR teg, which is very temting right now. I am kind of hesitant to get rid of the car right now because I have spent over 5,500 USD into it in the last year, so I am wrestling with the decision right now. 2morrow I am going down to the honda dealership to browse my options a bit.

so what do you all think?

So you're fluids and everything were fine? Like no mixing of oil in the coolant and such.

Was it just pinging or was it louder like a Knock? Your distributor could have loosened throwing off the timing Or the timing belt skipped a tooth.

Check the plugs and see if they are white meaning a lean mixture...

I think if you should swap in a B series... since you wanted to do that anyways.

Well, I think we have diaged the problem. The Accell Super Coil (not superstock, the giant one) was arcing, which was definatly what was causing the noise. fortunatly, I kept my old stock igintion coil, and it was hooked back up, and so far the car seems to run ok. Im gonna drive it around a little more to make sure that was all that was wrong.

well man, whenever something goes wrong with my car and i get it fixed, i am always leary for a while before i fully trust my car again. And still, there are things that i check on a constant basis (drip marks on the ground underneath etc.). I never just get into my car and go, i always check the tires and underneath before i go anywhere in it. I'm obsessive-compulsive anyway, but i think its good to check these things.

Hmm the coil arching... I have the same coil, I just add electrical tape around the boot... are you sure you had a good wire connection? Its a fairly tight fit, it's really hard to get the metal clip in there... but once in there it's hard to get out too.

What size was the insulation on your wires? and did you use the larger wire boot... I'm pretty sure the coil came with one.

teggy teggy teggy:D

sorry to hear of problems with your A20. but if you do decide to junk your engine, get a nice honda engine. try something over 140hp, you wont be disappointed. especially if you get a 5 speed to go along with it. i know if my engine goes, which if probley wont do any time soon, i would want to keep the car. to give away my 3gee would be near equal to someone that i care about dying. im shur im not the only one that would feel that way about their car. anyway, its all your decision. hope you can get a nice motor swap or something.