ok I have a 89 2.8 camaro...the motor lost power out of no where today and started dragging ***. the trans is ok but the motor has no go. I floor it and it barely goes 30-40mph. if I rev'd it, it would back fire around 2k-3k rpm badly! it would start up only if i held it to the floor.
I checked compression on all 6 cylinders and got 120-130 all the way around. spark plugs are new, cap and rotors check ecm by switching with spare, vats sys works and checked the fuel filter. I checked all that and then left it alone for about an hour and figured it would be the dizzy/icm, but after swapping that I've got no spark what so ever, and the dizzy is set at the timing mark i made!
I'm thinking it might be the ignition coil, it's a msd one, but i've only had it for about 6months but it wouldn't be the first time as it's my second one!
can you please help...need this car for work.....

 

Did you check the spark before you swapped the distributor? I'm just wondering if that could be a separate problem resulting from the swap. The backfiring makes me wonder if it had a fuel issue. I wouldn't expect backfiring from an ignition problem, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Hook a plug up to the ignition coil directly and see if it has spark.

If you get spark back and it still doesn't run right, check the injector fuses. There should be 1 for each bank of 3 injectors. I've had one of them randomly blow out on me before. It will run on 3 cylinders but just barely.
Also check fuel pressure.

But as long as there's no spark then fuel obviously can be ignored.

 

did you pull the plugs? what do them look like? any wet?

 

check for spark with screw driver and sitting against the upper plenum bolt nothing at all! i check the plugs and it was running a little lean before, but when I crank the motor you can smell nothing but fuel! I'm going to go get an ignition coil today to see if that fixes the problem...any other idea of what it could be

 

ok, so th plugs are soaked in fuel? did you put a plug in the boot and grond it to the block ?have a friend crank it over unless you have a starter triger. see if it sparks, and what color?

 

did that for the spark yesterday, just cranked the motor right now to check the injectors once over for fuel on the plugs....and the damn #3 injector isn't spraying! all the rest of them are! so I'll go get a ignition coil to fix the spark problem and a set of injector my buddy just pulled off of another 2.8 that someone rebuilt and blew in a week lol! so hopefully it works! will keep you updated

 

well went and got the ignition coil yesterday, and finally a spark.....now no boom! SMH...timing should be dead on, i check the dizzy for position and set it to #1 cylinder on the compression stroke and still nothing...wtf! Thinking about just towing it to my mechanic and letting him figure it out!