Thank you and bless you! This will be really interesting to see what happens. (My teenage daughter thanks you too. She just got an after-school job offer, and is very anxious to get her wheels back!) If it isn't noted on the package, please tell me what the shipping cost so I can reimburse you when I send them back.

FYI, I have to go on a short business trip Wed mid day through Friday night. So it will probably arrive while I am gone, and I will get on it first thing Sat morning.

 

OK, in case you did not see the update to "all crank, no fire"....
We got the car started. It was a bad speed sensor. The ultimate test was checking the resistance in the sensor. (clarks-garage.com) Although the sensor looked fine, it failed the test. Luckily I had another one that the plug fell apart. I took that sensor (which passed the test) and spliced the plug from the failed sensor and all was good. Car fired right up. Good luck with your car.

 

Success! Thanks to Legoland951 who lent me parts to swap, I have verified that my problem is the DME. I hooked up the DME from the '87, and immediately got spark (with a plug hooked up directly to the coil and grounded). Put the plug back and reconnected coil to distributer, and car fired up immediately and ran beautifully. In fact....many months ago I was trying to diagnose a rough idle when the engine was cold. Never did realy get it fixed, expecially when the AC was running. But....with this borrowed DME in, that problem went away too. It idled as smooth as could be immediately, even after sitting for two and a half weeks while working on this problem. So...I think my DME must have been on the way out for a long time.

What is interesting is that the final no-spark condition was intermittent, since it happened to my daughter months ago and then worked after sitting for a couple hours.

Legoland951, your parts will be on their way back to you shortly. I will PM the shipping tracking number.

(Meaningwhile, sending my DME off to be repaired/refurbished. Hopefully will have the car on the road sometime week after next).

 

Great Tom. I am glad you are able to get it to work and definitively identify the problem especially on a car driven by teenage daughter. I have seen bad solder joints causing DME intermittent failure so it may help to resolder the major joints along with checking contact points.

 

Good job!!

 

Yes, I took the DME apart and looked for bad solder joints. Tried to trace continuity across key places. Couldn't find any obvious problem. So at this point, I definitely feel more comfortable having it professionally refurbished or replaced.

 

And just a final report....

Sent my DME off to ECUDoctors for repair/refurb. In less than a week it was back on my door step. Installed it this weekend. And (just like when I tested it with Frank's 87 DME), it ran GREAT. Not only were my sparks back, but my rough and inconsistant idle was fixed. (I did have to adjust the idle per the procedure on Clark's Garage, but then it purred great and at a consistent speed when cold, hot, AC on, AC off.)

So, although it turned out to be the more expensive problem to repair, it is exciting to have the car back better than before after spending the few hundred for the DME refurb.

Big thanks to all the forum responses, and of course another one to Frank for loaning me his hardware.

(Now, if only I could get the car back from my daughter and get to drive it myself.)