My old distributor went. It had red dust/ metal shavings on some magnetic part in there ( igniter?)

Can it be fixed? Can you buy and replace the damaged parts?

 

The cap, rotor, coil, and igniter in the distributor can be removed and replaced.

You cannot replace the three distributor sensors. In this case, the distributor housing assembly must be replaced.

 

Red dust inside usually indicates that the bearing failed. I imagine it was making squeaky noises while the engine was running?

It is possible to replace the bearing; I've seen replacement distributor bearings for sale, but they aren't available from Honda. I read a write-up on the procedure a long time ago, but cannot remember the details of it. It seemed pretty easy to ruin the distributor base from what I recall.

 

Ditto all.

But how badly damaged is your dizzy now? Is there more than the bearing destroyed?

Here are some of your options, depending.
--Replace the housing w/OEM.
--Replace the entire dizzy w/one from Distributor King (see ebay). Cheaper, won't last as long
--Replace the bearing using writeups like http://honda.lioness.googlepages.com/distributorbearing. This is not too hard and very instructive. You have to plan ahead though and figure out from where you are going to buy the bearing and also the oil seal, since these cannot be purchased at the dealer, like Targa wrote.

What year is your Civic? For '92-'95 DX and LX, an OEM housing from bkhondaparts.com runs only about $100.

 

Wait, I wasn't all that clear.
I bought a used JDM distributor, my car is running fine now, I just have that OEM distributor there lying around in my room and thought about getting it fixed instead of tossing it obviously.

The symptoms where random hesitation. The day it REALLY got bad, it had terrible hesitation to accelerate, which would worsen as rpms increased. The car would move, I could get around, but with a jerking back n forth motion. This symptom, plus the red dust was what I used to decide to just get another one.

The thing is that since I already have another one, I can take my time and do this slowly, and fetch parts slowly if I can get solid info around the net ( H-T included)

Thanks for all your replies!

And please let me know if the symptoms tell you what I should replace in the distributor, so I can start looking around.

 

Those symptoms could possibly be caused by faulty ignition components, such as the coil and igniter. Do you have a local auto parts store that will test them for you? The service manual details resistance tests for the coil, if you have a multimeter. You can inspect the cap and rotor. How old are the plugs and plug wires?

 

I'm about to fetch a multimeter, so I'll test it myself. Meanwhile I'll be searching for some store that can also test it for me. Cap and rotor are fine, plugs and wires are definetely fine since the car is running great.

Thanks for the replies!

 

What year Civic? Any swaps? Any codes prior to replacing the OEM dizzy w/the aftermarket one?

If your Civic never completely stalled and died on you while driving, and it never flat out refused to start one day, then I would rule out the problem being either the coil or the igniter. There are some tests you can do, like RonJ notes. autozone.com's free online shop manual specific to your Honda or a shop manual should have them. You can also try the tests at http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/faq.html#startrun

You should test the three sensors inside the dizzy housing, per the shop manual. But if there were no codes, they likely are not the problem per se.

If there were no codes, I would be looking at either
--the old cap or rotor as being the problem, especially if they were old. More likely the cap. Get a crack in it, and that's it.
or
--the failing bearing (the cause of the red dust) throwing off the alignment of the three sensors inside the dizzy housing, and so messing up signals to the computer. Each sensor consists of (1) a chunk of specially shaped metal mounted on the dizzy shaft, called a "reluctor"; and (2) an electrical coil fixed to the inside of the housing, aligned with its respective reluctor. If the alignment is on the order of just 1/8-inch off, then the sensor will not work right. But a code should be thrown for this, too. Or the failing bearing could be throwing off something else, too, like simply the way the rotor's electrode lines up.