Last time I looked, there was no distributor cap on any Contour engine. Improper gap won't cause a complete loss of spark. The odds of the fault being the wires (all would have to be bad to get NO spark)is pretty slim.
Go to the coil plug, unplug it, turn the ignition to RUN (not START). Probe each of the pins in the connector. One of them HAS to have battery voltage on it. If not, troubleshoot the no power problem using the EVTM and a meter. If power is present on one of the pins, you are left with either a faulty crank sensor or a PCM fault.
I an referring to the 98 EVTM for a reference as I do not have a copy of the 97 set. I do not know if the fusebox layout is different or not but I am assuming that it is the same as the 98.
Steve
