white dust CAKED all over. i also noticed that there was a nice groove carved into the rotor button, looks like i will be picking one of those up later today.

so if RED/ORANGE dust is a sign that the bearing is about to give, what about WHITE dust? overheating? carbon tracking?

background info: the distributor i bought new (remanufactured) when i swapped in the H23 at the end of last summer (July '05). so the cap and rotor are of the same age (not OEM), spark plug wires and plugs fairly new also.

other recent problems: horrible hesitating/misfiring all throughout the entire RPM range. no CEL's, perfect idle, and one big headache.

im about to get my hands on another external coil and see if that is the culprit. i also plan on purchasing an OEM cap and rotor button asap.

any insight would be much appreciated.

 

To save yourself the future headache I would go ahead and get a remanufactured Honda distributor, along with the Honda cap and rotor, if the wires are aftermarket and cheap they could also be a problem. Also I assume you used NGK or denso plugs (non platinum).
But your misfire is more than likely whatever component was creating the white dust.

 

Looks like your distributor rotor came adrift, started walking up the shaft and started rubbing against the inside of the cap.
Do you have a picture of the Rotor? I suspect the retaining set screw may have backed out, got jammed under the rotor and started gouging away. The dust is the product of this gouging.
In light of this I'd say the entire "Running like crap" issue was (is) distributor related

P