1990 Honda Civic Won't Start - No Spark

My son has a 1990 Honda Civic that won't start. I am living 1,000
miles away for now and can only help via phone. I'm not even sure if
this model has a distributor with rotor, electronic points, or what.
It will turn over, but does not fire. He pulled the plug wires and put
a metal screw in the wires to check for spark. He didn't get any
spark. Can this be a distributor cap, or rotor, or coil, or timing
belt problem? What is most likely on this car? Thanks in advance for
any advice. J.

 

1. check the timing belt by cranking the motor with the oil filler cap
off - cam rotation will be visible if the belt's ok.
2. check the distributor internals. coil is one candidate, igniter the
other. go to tegger.com for how-to's on testing both these items.

 

No points; an igniter is used instead. And yes, it is a
common cause of non-starts with a no spark condition.
Igniters typically last eight years/100k miles or so.

See http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/faq.html#startrun for
help diagnosing whether it's the igniter or something else.

Take the caveat there about using only OEM parts seriously.
Honda's ignition systems do run best with OEM.