TonyJestis

Okay. Let's try this again. Six months ago, my wife's 1990 Honda Accord did not want to start. Now this Honda has been in the family since new. Her dad bought it for her mom brand new in 1989. It has been passed through family members and has accumulated about 240K miles.

Okay, so 6 months ago, Honda no start. I troubleshoot and find a burned cap and rotor button. I still check the coil and ignition module. Coil and module appear okay, so I install an Accel cap & rotor since this is all I could get on short notice and the wife needed her car today. Fast forward 6 months. Same problem surfaces. I figure coil or ignition module, right? Wrong! Same old problem, except the Accel cap & rotor are burned to a crisp! The cap is so brittle, it is breaking apart. The rotor and cap have visible burn marks. So back to the parts store for a heavy duty, Honda-like cap & rotor. Car starts (after being a little finicky. It seems it was flooded from the many attempts to start) and runs again.

So what in the ignition system caused this cap and rotor to become cooked? Will it happen again? Does this thing have a coil that is dying a slow death and the additional resistance in the secondary is causing caps and rotors to burn?

Any help would be appreciated.

Oh and BTW, the plan is to do a stock overhaul and run the car for 1M miles and take it back to the dealer it was purchased from in 1989.

Fitz Williams

iTrader: (1)

Suppose you go to a pick-and-pull, get a distributor and coil from a wreck, and install them. They were working when the car got wrecked so they should be a good starting point for yours.

TonyJestis

Okay. I can do that, but it doesn't help me explain the why. If it happens now, there's nothing to prevent it from happening again.

Fitz Williams

iTrader: (1)

The only other thing that it could be is excessive voltage to the distributor. You can check that with a volt meter, although I am not sure how that could happen.