Hi, I just inspected my distributor cap where the spark plug wires are connected to and I see white corrosion on the four firing pins. Does this mean I have to replace the cap? Repace the spark plug wires?

The reason I checked is because my Automatic 97 Prelude is missing in early gears. I've made sure it wasn't the transmission already. Somebody told me it might be the fuel injectors need cleaning but other people told me to change the spark plugs wires.

Knowing that my distributor shows signs of corrosion where do I go from here??

 

you can try to scrape the posts off with a razor blade. also scrape the rotor lightly and see if that works.

 

if you see crap on something you know that doesnt belong, change it, especially if its a cheap replacement part, ie cap.

check your spark plugs first to see whether you are running lean or rich... missing in early gears... are you experiencing bogging effects? possibly timing is retarded.... check that first before you look into dealing with the injectors... check your o2 sensor for carbon build up... if the o2 is all crusted up, you might not be sending enough fuel through so you have irregular spark on a bad a/f ratio mixture... never hurts to change out your spark plugs/wires/cap/rotor if they are due for a change anyway

 

The dizzie cap's ventilation might have become poor/blocked, which causes moisture retention and corrosion (that can also lead to the rotor becoming stuck on the shaft) and results in a very rough running of the engine (when the corrosion interferes with transmission of current from the rotor arm.) -- Somebody posted that a certain truck has a ventilation problem in its distributor because of a small window with mesh that gets blocked by debris over time. Somebody else said that removing water and corrosion from inside his civic's dizzie cap was becoming a weekly necessity. I realized that the dizzie cap I bought a few years ago for my Civic has stopped ventilating properly. It has a sort of 'chimney' with a special cap on it that allows some air to pass by not seating completely. I replaced that tiny cap with a 2" piece of plastic tube and hey presto, the car is running smoothly for 2 months (in a very damp winter) with no more removals of dizzie cap to clean the posts inside it. (Before, it would play up only a few days after a clean-up and the weather wasn't so bad.)

Where does the water come from? One explanation might be that it rises off the engine as it heats up and some finds its way toward the distributor and gets past its shaft seals if they are old? It seems to occur in various makes of vehicle so perhaps it happens when the car is parked after having warmed up. Then, as the engine and distributor cool down, water from cold, damp air in the environment condenses onto the metal surfaces, even under the dizzie cap?


p.s. I know this is "an old thread" (let sleeping dog's lie etc.) but people still do searches and get ideas from old threads, don't they?