ignition problem
 

got a '90 323 1.6 im helping a friend with, no spark is visible, the schematic shows a 4 wire distributor, but his is wired with 3, his book shows a '91 4x4 with 3 wires, but im not even sure that could be the problem, ive tested the coil, replaced igniter, even tried another distributor, eventually checked continuity on all grounds/dist-pcm wires/connector-connector and shorts to ground and am not seeing any problems, I guess my question would be the book showing a special ignition tester being used, is there any alternatives that I can manipulate? or maybe im overlooking something someone can point out? thanks for any help ahead of this post.

You can use a trigger type soldering iron to trigger spark. Just hold it against the distributor and pull the trigger. You should see spark from the coil wire.

that is weird, are you talking about a variable power type 110 volt type?

tried the soldering gun and with ignition on got no spark when pulling trigger, im guessing the activity from the gun excites the pickup, in thinking about the distributor, they showed the optical pickup/hall effect pickup as different options, this has optical, the distributor I tried had a different optical component visually, but connector was compatible, maybe I need to be looking for the identical distributor?

resolved spark problem, air flow sensor was killing dist. pulse, from short? new sensor coming