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Mike H.

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Sean Breheny <shb7@cornell.edu> 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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