Hey guys, I'm working on my girlfriend's Accord at the moment and can't get the rotor off of the distributor. The car's a 91 Accord with the F22A1 motor (SOHC, 16V) in it. I've got the distributor out and want to swap the coil, but I can't get the rotor out. I know on the B-series rotors, there's a screw on the side holding it in, but I can't find anything like that on this one. Can I safely pry off the rotor, or is there a clip I'm missing? It seems pretty stuck on there, but I can't see anything holding it in.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

CLOSED.....got it off...it was just being stuborn as hell.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by freakin &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">CLOSED.....got it off...it was just being stuborn as hell.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Sounds about right for most things on cars . Glad you got it off, did that help the problem?

 

Yeah, it worked. I couldn't see any clips, so I pried it off with a screwdriver. I lucked out with Honda's interchangability. I had a spare B16A distributor, and the coil was the same part no. The car is working great now. I'm sure that'll get me some brownie points with the mrs.

 

Could you throw a little more info here please with your FIX, was the dizzy a TEC model. Possibly a Hitachi or Mitsubishi? You mentioned crossing over some parts from one to the other assuming they were both of the same maker but on different engines. These Forums have some really good FAQ posts that cover a good range of important info, don't mean to be critical as I know that developing a large base of info would take the administator hours and hours to accumulate such databases but at least this can be in the archives for future searches by folks with the same problem and dizzy maker.

TEC Distributor, Honda "A" will not start, no spark. Gather info from owner, distributor was very noisy prior to car finally dieing about a month after noise was discovered. Pulled cap off to find a large amount of rust (main shaft bearing has slowly grinded itself to death leaving miniture metal particals which had corroded to a fine brown rusty color all over the interior of the distributor). This is refered to as a Pattern Failure, a common problem on these things.

The original bearing is said to not be available as a seperate part and would require some experience and a press and a puller to change anyways, bigger money for labor. Once you see this rust and no sign of oil on the inside of the dizzy then the outer housing is reusable. (OIL INSIDE IS ANOTHER STORY).

Get recycled dizzy with same style plugs (possibly different exterior housing), this one has two square (rectangle), not round plugs. Same maker, TEC. I rape both dizzies, remove all guts from corroded one with good body / internal oil seal and reinstall other dizzy guts from body of different style (same plug config) and whammy, home rebuilt.

I crossed over all the sensors (3) and main shaft with good smooth bearing, cleaned out the original housing, lubed oil seal, installed non corroded ignitor and coil and guess what, one of the rotors was stuck on the shaft, didnt even try to be nice, had a useable one in hand, ripped it off in pieces and pryed the metal retainer off with a screwdriver.

This whole job was a learning experience, but why, I have rebuilt many TEC dizzies. After installing the assy the car didnt start but it had spark out of the spark plug wire that jumped to ground easily. OK, maybe I messed up the fireing order, nope, marked the cap before starting the job, pulled the cap and set engine up to TDC, WOA, rotor is 90 degrees out of phase, OK time to pull dizzy again and take it all the way back to the house where rebuild was done (its midnight now).

Now I know why two other shops could not find one of this specific model dizzy USED. Owner didnt want to pay for a true rebuilt one as was almost what was paid for entire car. I very closely examined the three reluctors and their alignment, PERFECT MATCH, whats up, WOA, look at the retaining pin hole on the drive end of the shaft, it was 90 degrees out of phase. I didnt reuse the original rusty one, I just happened to have a third used dizzy that the drive end pin hole matched, one more rebuild and BACK ON THE ROAD.

The TEC dizzy pick up coils are non adjustable and do not require an air gap measurement. The shaft bearing goes bad allowing the shaft to wobble around in a larger circle letting the rotor hit and even cut the cap electrodes all the way off, the car will still run. When the wobble gets so bad the reluctors will close the air gap and even hit the pick ups destroying the reluctor, pick up or both not allowing the car to start, so rather than inspecting them I just change the entire set up from a known good distributor.

Ignition coil lesson, if you do this job beware of the small screws from the ignition coil and the pick up coils. They are of the same screw and pitch but of different length, the pick up screws are longer, if you put the shorter ignition coil screws back into the pick ups, they will do the job, BUT if you put the pick up longer screws into the ignition coil and make them tight enough to lock the washer you will have bottomed out the screw in the nutplate, run the screw through the bottom of the nutplate, forced the nutplate up and slightly out of the coil plastic molding, in the end you may have broken the nutplate terminal from the coil winding (copper wire) and created an open circuit, hence, no spark again. If you just make the screw tight not realizing that it has not locked the washer then you have left the wire from the ignitor semi loose (unkowingly) with a good chance of a comeback for a no start, no spark. Pop the cap, remove rotor and shield, reverse shorter and longer screws (can be done on the car), reassemble and whammy, back on the road.

One other lesson I still need to remember is the alignment of the drive gear back on the shaft, there are alignment lines on the bottom of the dizzy housing to match up with the drive gear alignment mark but it is possible to be 180 degrees out of time as the shaft has no mark on the bottom drive end, hence, I need to remember which way to point the top reluctor (single pointer) but it only takes five minutes to pull the dizzy from the engine and reinstall the drive to the correct configuration. (ANOTHER STORY)

Sorry for the long post but was bored on a Sunday night (my Friday).

 

Hey, yeah, I never thought that I might actually contribute something usefull to this site. It seems I'm generally relying in it for info.

The problem with the car was that it wouldn't start when it was hot out. I checked for spark during the no start times by pulling a plug, re-attaching the lead and grounding it to the side of the head. Wasn't getting anything from it. If I'd try the car again later in the evening. It would start up and run fine. No problems. The issue didn't start up until it got really hot in town over the last couple of weeks. I figured it had to be something in the distributor and the coil seemed like a likely culprit. I didn't wan't to buy any parts before I was sure of the problem, so I brought over a distributor from my collection. From what I've found all of the B-series distributors share the same coil and ignitor, even between the ODB-1 and OBD-2 models I have (the external harnesses are different though). The casings and caps are different between VTEC and non-VTEC models, but everything else looks the same.

Anyhow on to the Accord. It was a TEC model, but I'm not sure if it's a Hitachi or Mitsubishi. Is that labeled on it somewhere? I was hoping the same would be true, but since it's an F-series and it's ODB-0 I wasn't holding by breath. To my surprise, the coil was the same part no., TC-08A, and fit perfectly. I confirmed the ignitor as well, in case it didn't fix the problem and I had to pull it apart again, same part as well. I did notice a little bit of red/orange dust in there, but it was pretty minimal, so I just attributed it to the car having 240,000KM and that possibly being the first time the cap had been taken off. It didn't concern me at the time and there wasn't any oil leakage or shaft play, so I just cleaned it off with some compressed air. After reading your post, I'm a little concerened now, hehe. I'm sure it'll be fine.

So what I've learned from all of this in short form:
Most of the parts in TEC distributors are interchangeable. Just confirm the part numbers. After this, I'm sure my girlfriend won't think I'm nuts for collecting random parts all of the time like distributors and fuel pump relays.

 

Here Honda uses three different distributors, TEC, Mitsubishi with the three diamond logo on the cap and Hitachi with their logo on the cap, it looks like a circle in a circle and the letter H in the middle of the inner circle, its is a more complicated design that that but it is the Hitachi logo.