This has been happening for awhile now, but I've been trying to find a fix but I'm not sure what's going on. I don't have the money to replace the entire thing, but I would love some help.

I've had some friends look at it, we tried replacing the seal on the rotor but that's not fixing anything. It's simply leaking outside the distributor and leaking down onto my tranny and other crap in the bay. Would love to know if there are any other solutions? I'm not car savvy, I'm learning because it's my first car, haha.

1998 Honda Prelude with a H22a4 engine.

 

is it leaking through the distributor ?

 

Yes I'm sure it is the distributor. When I remove the distributor from the engine, it seems like there's oil inside the little hole that the rotor goes into. After my car runs for awhile, when I come to a park and shut the car off, I see the leak dripping pretty frequently from the distributor where the seal should be. I've replace it so I'm not sure what's going on still.

 

tec and hitachi use different seals, i'm wondering if you're either using the wrong seal or somehow the shaft is scratched or maybe it's an aftermarket distributor

 

I'm thinking you should post a pic of where it's leaking, and what you replaced, because your terminology so far is wrong and it's confusing us.
If it's the o-ring leaking (external leak), thats like $2 and you can replace it easily yourself.
if it's the seal (internal leak), that is all the way deep inside the distributor and is not an amateur repair, but I know a guy you can send it to for repair if necessary, for a lot cheaper than a new distributor

 

I'm guessing that the Prelude's distributor is virtually identical on the inside to the Civic one for similar years. Here's an excellent walkthrough of dismantling and rebuilding a Civic distributor


I just rebuilt mine, and the most difficult part of it was getting all the screws out without stripping them (I think they have thread-locker on them). I ended up stripping one.

There are 3 components that I think could cause leaking if something is wrong: The o-ring, the oil seal, and the bearing.

If the bearing is leaking, the entire unit is toast. If the oil seal or o-ring are leaking, they need to be replaced.

If you open up the distributor and there's oil inside, then either the oil seal or the bearing is leaking.