Look carefully inside and outside the distributor cap and on the rotor 
(yes the new ones) for carbon tracks (thin black like pencil tracks from 
high voltage point to a ground). Don't ignore the fuel injection system. 
This vehicle should have OBDII, has it been scanned, likely some codes 
will appear. Could be a bad sparkplug or wire. Pull the plugs and look 
at the color, should be light gray, if one or more is off color, suspect 
that cylinder. Could be a sticking valve, check the compression. Go back 
to basics, of proper operation, there must be a ignition source, proper 
fuel mixture, and compression.

Had a 1976 Ford Bronco with a 351M V8. Before leaving on a trip from 
Ohio to Florida, I changed the sparkplugs, rotor, dist. cap, and wires. 
The engine quit suddenly between Daytona and Orlando Florida which made 
me suspect electrical. Pulled the coil wire at the cap (center terminal) 
checked for spark by cranking the engine, OK. Then pulled a sparkplug 
wire at plug and checked for spark, no good. Had happened to bring along 
the old cap and rotor (don't know why, just threw it in at last minute) 
along. Replaced the rotor and she ran fine for another 70,000 miles or 
so when we sold it. Total time on the side of the road, maybe 10 minutes. :)

Sean Breheny wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I thought that OT was the safest area for this if it is appropriate at all.
>
> I have a 2001 Honda Accord DX, 4 cyl engine. A few months ago, it
> began to have a rough idle at times. It would sometimes stall when I
> came to a stop. I discovered that there were visible arcs around the
> outside of the distributor cap. When I took the cap off, I found that
> the rotor and the four contacts showed some corrosion and burning. I
> replaced the cap, rotor, and gasket around the cap. I chalked this up
> to simple normal maintenance (the car had about 96000 miles on it and
> had never had these parts replaced). Around the same time, I replaced
> the spark plugs and spark plug wires, too. The plugs looked fine with
> perhaps a tiny amount of evidence of too high a temperature.
>
> All was fine for about 2 months (3000 miles). Then the problem began
> to happen again. This time I couldn't see any arcing outside the
> distributor cap, but when I looked at the contacts inside, both they
> and the rotor were again burnt. Cleaning them with a Scotchbrite pad
> temporarily fixed the problem (for about 3 weeks), but it has started
> to come back again.
>
> I am somewhat at a loss to explain why this is happening. I checked
> the battery voltage: is it 12.9V when the car is off and 14.3V when
> on. These seem fine to me (I had a hunch that perhaps the charge
> voltage was way too high and was overdriving the ignition module).
>
> I have found very few FAQs and forum posts about this issue, and none
> for my model year. The usual advice is that it could be any of the
> following: oil leak into distributor, water leak into distributor,
> distributor bearings damaged causing wobble of the rotor, charge
> voltage too high, faulty ignition module, damaged plugs or wires. Some
> of these I've checked into and found nothing, some I have yet to
> really check.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sean
>   
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