i put a new cap & rotor on (90 crx si), worked on it in carwash stall, i did something stupid, not fully thinking, and i put piece of tape on each plug wire labelled with the number, then i took the plug wires off the cap, then put the new cap & rotor on, and thought i was done, then realised i was supposed to label the distributor cap showing where each wire goes, not on the wires !!,

i remember where the #1 plug wire went on the cap, but did'nt know if clockwise? or counter-clockwise?, i thought it went in normal order like : (1,2,3,4), so i tried putting it counter-clockwise and tried to start car, and it was sputtering and shaking so turned it off right away, then i tried doing it clockwise and it started and was shakey and sounded like "put-put-put-put-put-put), but idled normal, i turned it off and tried as many other combos on how the order goes, but all of them were real bad, i was there for couple hours way longer than i meant to, and just wanted to get home,

so i decided to put it going clockwise (1-2-3-4), and try to carefully drive home which was 5 mins away, i just slowly coasted barely pressing the gas, keeping it under 1000rpm, it sounded like an old car and did little pop/ backfire sounds a couple times, i was able to get home at least, i went online and found correct order was (1-3-4-2 clockwise), so just need to put it like that and hopefully will run ok.

my question is, could it cause any damage or mess anything up if i drove car with wrong plug wire order on distributor cap ???,

cause i'm worried if that did anything or not ? i mean is there anything i should do before driving car again ?,


info or opinions would be cool, thanks

 

Anything's possible, but just set it up correctly and see how it runs before we all jump to conclusions.

 

Have you started it yet ?? I'm gonna go with my instinct and say it should be OK. If you drove it like that for too long I would think it could cause some problems . Put them on right , and start her up.

 

yeah, after putting correct order, it works normal and did'nt damage anything, i just had it parked and idling, did'nt drive it yet, but seems fine when its idling, hopefully will drive same also,

whenever theres a new problem on my car, first thing i tend to do is jump right into "worry-mode", expecting the worse, and i start reading up on it trying to figure out the cause obsessively, and usually in the end its something way smaller than i thought it was going to be.

 

It's fine. Don't worry about it.

 

1-3-4-2

 

ive done that **** like 10 times lol. always get them mixed up somehow even though i have them memorized all all hondas

 

they never fire sequentially in a Honda

 

or any engine that ive seen

 

they should have the numbers stamped on the distributor caps already, just to make it easier for people !, i might put some type of permenant marks on the cap showing where each wire goes on the cap now, just so i don't have to worry about it in the future, like get those little stickers that have numbers on them in the school supply isle at grocery store or something, and put sticker next to each hole on the cap the plug wire goes to.

 

You must be one of the five people left on planet earth that doesn't have a smartphone.

 

actually i do have a smartphone, i have an i-phone, but for some reason i decided not to bring my phone that day, cause i was just going to a carwash stall close to my apt., and i knew a cap & rotor was easy to do,

but i overlooked the part labelling the wires to know how they go, and usually i would simply use my cellphone and call my friend whos a mechanic and he would help me, but instead i had to do more work trying different things, and eventually having to take a risk and drive it carefully back home, knowing the wires were in the wrong order.