Need help. I'm not getting fire!

I was driving to work when all of a sudden, the engine died. I towed it home and found I am not getting spark. I replaced the electronic pickup in the distributor and still no fire. I did some testing on the coil and the ignitor(ignition module) according to my Haynes manual but I couldn't find anything that would tell me what is wrong. I would appreciate ANY advice on what might be wrong. I priced a coil (over $300) and an ignition mudule (almost $400) and I do not want to buy either unless I know that is the problem. It is a carbed 22r, so I don't have a computer (thank God). Please help me so I can move on to paint and body mods!

are you lowered? does it have inner wheel wells?

I have full inner, unmodified fender wells. All the factory equipment is in tact.

sounds like a coil but hard to say

yeah it does sound like a coil issue. when i was putting my 22r back in and tried to fire it i wasnt getting any spark either. turned out to be a ground wire problem...unfortunatley i dont kow where the ground goes to.. to even know where it came disconnected from so i just cut it and grounded it to the body in the engine compartment. also, you can use a test light to test the power supply to the coil to make sure its still good. it will react two different ways if the key is on or if it is off. by doing so you should be able to narrow down your search that way. if the problem is in the coild itself, lets say its getting power just fine but not producing power to the coil wire it takes a special tester to test plugwires and the coil out. a simple test light wont do anything. they can probably be found at napa or something like that for pretty cheap. i would try to test everything you can before you drop that kind of cash on something you dont know for sure or not.


oh and if your gonna spend 300 on a new coil, you can buy a proformance msd system for 350.

Thanks. I checked all of the scrap yards around here and guess what. They said they crush any thing 20 yeaars or older! What a bunch of crap! They are taking the engines, trannies, and diffs out and crushing the rest! That means it is only going to be harder to get good parts for my '87. And since the coil and ingnitor are mounted on the fenderwell, they're all gone. I have someone in SC checking the yards, so hopefully I can find em there. You know, in just a few more years if scrap yards keep this type of policy, we might start seeing the 89 body styles getting sent to the grave via crusher! Isn't that a shame! I guess classic cars are exempt because of the people who restore them, so what about all of us who keep these trucks going? Hell, I just want a coil!

I know the feeling, there the same around here. Thankfully there getting to the point of calling me when one comes in..

Honestly I'm beginning to think that if we plan to keep on building or driving our trucks, we should start stockpiling the junk in our back yard!

^ i second that! i got a little junk yard started(my wife fukin hates it).........i got a coil from a 90 toyota.>22r..... i could come off of it......you pay the shipping and we'll call it a bro deal...i'll check on it as soon as i can?!(may be next week kinda busy this week)

the pull-a-part in charlotte has an 85 and a 86 4 runner if that helps, not sure how far you are from there.