Distrubitor Cap Question

[DaGr8Tim]

What should the inside of a cap look like if it's got some age to it, but still works fine.

I just pulled my cap and the contact on the rotor was blackened, along with the contacts on the cap. There was a thin dusting of carbon on the inside of the cap, but it wipped off with my bare finger.

Also, with a bad cap/rotor, what kind of performance/driveability issues can you run into?

 

[Hot 6t Falcon]

A bad cap will give you erratic misses at its best and backfiring at the midpoint and the car won't run at its worst.

Yours sounds to be normal, unless you had just cleaned it a few days earlier.

Use you Old Timer knife to scrape the cap contacts and the rotor. Make certain that there are no carbon "tracks" inside of the cap - they look like pencil lines. If there are tracks, just replace the cap.

Check your dist. shaft by trying to wobble the shaft at the rotor. It should not wobble at ALL. If it does, start shopping for a new dist.

While your checking, check your spark plug wires. Wait until it's darn dark. Wipe your wires down with window washing fluid. Start the engine, and watch for any blue light showing leaking eletricity. You could still have an internally broken wire.

Hope I helped and Good Luck

 

[DaGr8Tim]

A bad cap will give you erratic misses at its best and backfiring at the midpoint and the car won't run at its worst.

Yours sounds to be normal, unless you had just cleaned it a few days earlier.

Use you Old Timer knife to scrape the cap contacts and the rotor. Make certain that there are no carbon "tracks" inside of the cap - they look like pencil lines. If there are tracks, just replace the cap.

Check your dist. shaft by trying to wobble the shaft at the rotor. It should not wobble at ALL. If it does, start shopping for a new dist.

Hope I helped and Good Luck

Thanx for the info. The plugs and wires are less than 2 months old.

A new cap and rotor are less than $10 at work. So I'm going to be replacing them payday just as routine maintance. Also the coil doesn't cost very much so It's getting swapped when the cap and rotor get changed.

Then next payday it's getting a new ignition module. I'm not doing the ignition module the same time I do the rest because the car needs an exhaust ASAFP.