I was doing regular maintenance on my fiances 95 civic DX. Spark plugs, wires, dist. cap and rotor button etc...

When I went to take the rotor button off it was rusted on and stuck pretty good. I tried to pry it a little and cracked the black plastic housing that covered a metal thing slightly above and to the left of the rotor button. I think it is arcing now because I put a piece of electrical tape where the metal was exposed and started the car and the check engine light came on for the first time ever and I took the dist. cap back off and looked where I had put the piece of tape and saw that it had blasted through.


My question is... do I need to buy a whole new distributor for that broken plastic housing that went around the metal piece? or can I replace that piece somehow?


here is a pic:

 

BTW- Long time lurker... first time poster. Not a noob but nothin really came up in the search.

 

it's like $1 at the dealer. take the rotor off and the plastic piece should come right off easily.

http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/...UTOR+%28TEC%29

 

in the diagram you posted.... it's not listed as a separate piece. it's part of the distributor housing. So I assume that's what I need.... the whole housing.

 

ok. Installed brand new distributor. But it sounds like its rattling? or like... scarping a little? Car runs great but when you get close you can hear it inside the distributor cap housing. Is that normal?

 

Yeah. The piece you broke is the cylinder position sensor. If I were you i'd get a new housing from honda, aftermarket/reman distributors seem to have an abnormally high failure rate. There is supposed to be a plastic piece between the rotor and the distributor housing btw, this is probably what the last poster was refering to.

 

Like 94EG8 wrote, this is the (coil of the) CYP sensor. I would check the part numbers at www.bkhondaparts.com, go to a junkyard, find a 92-95 Civic that per bkhonda has the same dizzy as your 95 Civic DX, and take the CYP coil off. See steps 1-6 of http://honda.lioness.googlepages.com/distributorbearing for this repair. Otherwise, as has been noted, it is normally sold as part of the dizzy housing.

 

Yea, that's what I thought he was talking about.

 

Yah. Not talking about the dividing piece of plastic... talking about the piece that has metal showing on the corner where the plastic was broken away from. Above and slightly to the left of the rotor button.