Well, hopefully there's a resurection in its future. Maybe someone on this group can lend me a hand. Sunday, as I sat at a stop light in my 90 miata, I noticed a slight whirring noice, but not even so much of one that I could tell whether or not it was anything more than my head messing with me. I still think there is a chance that it was my imagination, but the events that immediatly preceded my noticing the noice would cause me to think otherwise. As the light turned green I turned left to find that all of a sudden my engine had died. I had enough of a roll to pull into a parking lot, where I found that the starter would turn the engine over vigorously, yet the engine wouldn't start. I immediately checked the fuses, to no avail, yet I found that the plugs were not firing. I towed it back to the house, and now I'm left wondering what to do.
Some background: I love my car, which I purchased from my brother 3 years ago. It has just hit 125,000 and had been showing no signs of engine trouble whatsoever. While I change the oil regularly, I am ashamed to say that my financial situation has not allowed me to give it as much maintenance as I would have liked (!I have not changed the plugs or wires since I've purchased it... insert insulting remarks here.) although I was able to scrape together enough money last summer to get a badly needed paint job. My financial situation leaves me with no opportunity to immediately spend anything over $200, and I fear that it may require more...
Ok, back to the problem at hand. I wonder if my coil pack may have gone out on me, although I realize there are other things that could result in the same scenario. I am wondering what I can do to narrow the field as far as what may be causing my problem. Could it be that neglect of those plugs and wires could have resulted in an all of a sudden loss of spark (One second she was running strong, the next she was dead) My limited knowledge of engine electrical systems would lead me to think that while those old plugs and wires are probably not helping anything, they probably aren't the cause of the problem at hand (let me know if I could be dead wrong.) I live in a pretty small town in arkansas, so a mazda shop is pretty out of the question. If I can find out what is wrong, and can purchase the part, as long as I don't feel that I'll make the problem worse than I'll do the work myself. If necessary I'll take it in to a mechanic to plug their computer in, but I don't know how they'll feel about giving me a diagnostic just to have me tow it away and fix it myself.