So I just bought this 1998 Honda Civic EX last week and after it driving fine for two days it stopped starting. It would crank and crank and crank and never start.

anyway, after some trial and error I came to the conclusion that I needed to replace the distributor. When I went to do that however I realized that the previous owner had hardwired what seems to be the ignition straight to the distributor. Can anyone tell me why they would have done this or how I could undo it and would there be any problem with me replacing this distributor with a normal stock distributor? Also, if I do keep the distributor hard wired this way can anyone tell me which wire goes where? Of course we mixed them up when we cut the old distributor off. :-(

thanks in advance for any help. I can post pictures if that would be helpful. I’ll go take the photos here in a couple minutes and post them.

 

Ok so I figured this out by just connecting the two wires that were going to the distributor to themselves and just booking the distributor up normally. Does anyone see any problem with this?


now I am having trouble with a rough idle and occasional squealing under the hood. What could this be? Could the timing be off now because of the distributor? And if that’s it what is the squealing about.

thanks in advance for any help.