CRX: my car broke down on me!

[Ronnie Overby]

OKay, when glorious morning, I wake up, get in my beloved 88 crx si, and drive to work. The car is acting perfectly normal. A few hours later I take lunch, I go get in my crx, from the instant I started it, it wasn't acting right. The engine was MUCH louder than usual. It didnt really sound bad....It was just LOUDER! Also the tach was jumping around. For example during acceleration in 4th gear at around 2500 rpms it would just jump down to 2000 and then right back up to 2500 again, really fast. That's when I noticed it the most. 10 minutes into my trip, the car just quit on me. The engine would still turn over but wouldn't start. My dad, who is a mechanic, said it didn't sound like it was firing, so we checked to see if the spark plugs were sparking, and they weren't. So, we changed coils. That didn't help. We noticed that the rotor button wasn't turning when we tried to start the car. So, we changed the entire distributer. That didn't help. We then took the valve cover off to see if the timing belt was broken. The belt looked fine. But when we pulled on it there was no tension. So we turned over the engine to see what the belt and cam gears were doing. the belt around the crankshaft was vibrating...which suggested to me that the teeth were broken off at the bottom of the belt. has this ever happened to anyone? Im just hoping i didnt mess up the valves or pistons. can i get some feedback please?   thanks, ronnie