dizzy dizzy dizzy change the dizzy. or the distributer. if that dosnt fix it take the dizzy back to the store and tell them it was the wrong one theyll refund your money. than let me know how it went. i have had the same problem your having with 4 other civics on my team. we changed the dizzy first and that fixed it. im 100 % positive that that is your problem.

 

Continued searching found that sometimes the distributor housing can break down and allow the spark to short against its case. I pulled the coil out one more time and noticed it did look a little burned. For about the third time now I thought "that's got to be it." Off to the store to buy another one, including a lifetime warranty. I put the new coil in and gave it a crank. It started! What a relief. The car has been down for 3.5 weeks now and my wife and I have been sharing one car between work and school and it's been a pain. Finally we can move on. Anyway, I've included a picture for future reference for anyone that might be searching with this problem. Hopefully people will be able to spot this before they go spending $200 on things that don't need replacing. The worst part about this problem is that the coil can test perfect with an Ohm meter and still be bad. Always inspect the plastic housing even if you get a good reading from the terminals.

 

also, are you sure you check the BIG ASS GREEN ignition fuse in the under the hood fuse box???

 

just in general its kinda hard to really check for a spark. yeah if you hold it against the block you might see a spark, but if don't it doesn't mean anything. I always use a timing light to confirm spark/no spark.

 

Yep, I checked all the fuses beforehand. That was one of my first hopes in solving this problem. Testing for spark would be really hard if this happens because it technically is sparking, you just can't see it or arc it anywhere (like with a screwdriver). I suppose if you cut a hole in your distributor cap you could see a flash every time it shorted, but that's about all that I can think of.