Re: Engine not ran since clinton was president.
Sorry to tell you that if it just quit on the water with no weird noises, that sounds like an electrical problem. Sorry, because electrical problems are the most difficult to trace.
First, at the bottom of the terminal board on the engine will be a rectangular aluminum or plastic box. This is the circuit breaker. All power to the switch and engine goes through this box. If it is black plastic and has tripped, you need to push the small reset bar on one side of it. if it is aluminum, it resets itself. However, if the engine is cranking with the key, this is probably ok. Next, you need to check that when you turn on the switch, the blue wire has 12 volt power. This wire provides power to the CD box. If the switch is corroded or broken and there is no power to the blue wire, then --no spark. Check the wires that go up under the flywheel (blue, white, and red. All go to the CD box.) to be sure that they have not rubbed against the flywheel and shorted or broken. Next check the distributor. If there is only one wire coming out the side, it is a points distributor. Check the points to see that they are clean and properly gapped--.014 for 3 cyl, .010 for 4 cyl. If there are two wires coming out of the side, it is an electronic distributor. It has an electronic eye instead of points and there is no known way to test the eye to see if it is properly functioning. However, you can check to see if (I think its a blue wire) one wire has power going to it. No power here, no signal to the CD box and no spark.
Take apart the distributor cap (two screws on top) and check the coil and plug wires to see if they are seated properly on their pins.
To test the CD box, you need special equipment so you would need to find or borrow a known good CD box. Check that the black ground wire from the CD box is connected to a good ground, is not broken, and is not corroded. You can check to see if the box is putting out power to the coil. If not, then the box is probably bad.
The distributor belt may have broken. It will be obvious if it has. If that's the case, pull the flywheel and replace the belt. That's about all I can think of at the moment. Good luck.
