94 Civic Si

NAPA lists a distributor seal kit, made by Dorman - Part #: NOE 6004280, $20.99

Fitment shows Del sol '93-97

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/NOE6004280

94 Civic Si

I will be curious how it fits.
On my old and new bearings, ID looks to be >12.5mm, but my calipers are obviously not quite as refined as yours...


Old bearing:


Less than 13mm

94 Civic Si

I picked these up today at my local NAPA, they fit well and come with hardware and o-ring for distributor cap. $24.88 each.

94 Civic Si

My NAPA did not have this kit, but they did have an o-ring that looked like it would work for where the dizzy goes into the head: 727-2619 - $1.19 each.

94 Civic Si

Next up - installing the new bearing:

94 Civic Si

I measured the install depth on the old bearing before removing it from the shaft - it was just under 4.1 cm.
Now time to put the new bearing on!

94 Civic Si

Learn from my mistakes!!!
Next time I do this, I will do 3 things differently:

1. Put the distributor shaft in the freezer
2. Put the bearing in the oven at 170F, or at least put it out in some direct sunlight.
3. Place your supports close in to the center of the bearing plate, under the raised lip, not further out...

I thought it would not be too bad to tap the new bearing on the shaft, and it wasn't, except I had my supports too far out and ended up cracking the bearing plate


Don't spread your supports out this wide:

Oh noes!

94 Civic Si

Instead, use the freezer and the oven, and put your supports in nice and close to the center:

Put your supports in nice and close to center - under the raised lip.

Confirm your install depth.

94 Civic Si

Remove the old seal. I used a seal puller:

Claw the old seal out:

The spring side of the seal goes towards the engine and oil.

94 Civic Si

Once I had the old seal out, I wanted to see if the distributor housing would still accept the bearing plate that now had a crack in it. It turns out it does!

I have no idea if this distributor will work. Are the loads and stresses and vibrations too much for the cracked plate? I guess there is one way to find out...


Test fit the cracked bearing plate in the housing.

The crack in the plate is tightened up:

94 Civic Si

Once I saw there might be hope for my cracked bearing plate, I thought I would move forward.

I dug out my kit from Bearing Supply and saw that the o-rings they shipped for the seal where the distributor inserts into the head are way, way off. It looks like I did not get any pictures of the mis-match.

The internal dizzy seal at the shaft looks like a match. I threw that seal into the freezer to see if it might make things easier to insert into the distributor body - it did!


New seal is in!

94 Civic Si

The Dorman kit came in this week, the seals look correct.
I don't think I saved the old ones that I pulled. I usually do!
We 'll have to see when I rebuild the dizzy that is on the car.


NAPA p/n in parens...

94 Civic Si

When I saw that the bearing plate might still work, and the new seal went in, I decided to proceed w/ the rebuild.

I lubed up the distributor shaft with some Super Lube and put things back together.

Fire in the hole!

94 Civic Si

I have the TEC coil, and I had marked this distributor that I was rebuilding as a bad coil. A few years ago I swapped the coil over from the distributor that worked in the car, and this one worked.
For this rebuild I had bought a new coil off eBay, so I went to compare the values between the bad coil and new.
I don't remember what I got when I tested between A & B, but when I tested A and the secondary, neither coil was in the range printed above from the FSM.
The bad one was ~10k ohms, and the new one was in the 11s.
I guess we will see what happens when I put this dizzy in!

I never went through the ignitor test on vehicle. To me it reads as if you are only checking for continuity of the vehicle harness, not testing the actual ignitor.

94 Civic Si

The last thing I did was clean up the contacts for the coil.
They looked a little crusty.
I used the wire wheel attachment on a Dremel tool.


A little crusty looking:


Before:


After:


Clean the threads on the screws:


I dropped the original ignitor back in place:

94 Civic Si

I am hoping to drop this in over the weekend, I will let y'all know how it goes!

spAdam

iTrader: (1)

How was the condish of the wire insulation on your sensor assembly? This is the problem I ran into finding used distributors...

94 Civic Si

Wires seem fine.
I think you can see some in the pics above...

TomCat39

I would JB weld the crack of the plate at the very least. Will make it as close to whole without welding and JB weld on cast is super strong. Then you don't have to fret the vibration, being JB weld is a softer epoxy it will absorb the vibration and still hold.

Sorry to see you cracked that bad boy.

94 Civic Si

Good idea!
I was bummed I cracked it as well, but I think it will be okay.
Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes!

94 Civic Si

When are you going to try this bearing?
Inquiring minds want to know!!!

spAdam

iTrader: (1)

Gonna be a bit. My workbench is in shambles, has no power until I finish rewiring the garage, and it's race season so I'm traveling almost every week. Most of my free time happens sitting on a plane. Didn't plan it this way but that's how it shakes out lol.

94 Civic Si

Safe travels my friend!
The bearing seems like the elusive component to being able to rebuild our own, so I am excited about an easily accessible source.

spAdam

iTrader: (1)

Appreciate it! For sure. I’m excited to see how yours works out.

94 Civic Si

Me too!
WTF, it has been a month? I need to stab this in. Hopefully this weekend.