Distributor cap and rotor keeps going bad...
 

My '96 GSR has a problem with the cap and rotor on the distributor going bad. I bought the car back in April, and like 3 months later, the car started bucking and the tachometer gauge started jumping all over the place. The problem got progressively worse to the point where the car would'nt stay running for more than like 30 seconds to a minute. I brought the car to the shop, since I couldn't find the problem myself, and they found the problems to be the distributor cap/rotor. The wierd thing is that the cap looked ok, nearly new. Now, 2-3 months later, the car is doing the same exact thing. The car misses and bucks and any rpm and speed, and the tach is jumping all over the place again. This leads me to believe that there is something wrong with the distributor itself; like its eating/burning up caps and rotors. Also, when I brought my car in to the shop to have the cap and rotor replaced a couple months ago, they said that the distributor in the car wasn't the right one for the model year. They found out when they tried to put a replacement cap on and it would'nt exactly fit. They said it was from some other model...maybe Honda? Anyways, maybe the incorrect distributor is causing the cap and rotor to fail, or maybe something else? I can't drive my car right now, so I'm stuck with my motorcycle. I don't want to keep putting caps/rotors on the car if they are just going to keep failing on me. Any suggestions?

can you visually tell that the cap/rotor are bad? corrosion etc? what shop is this? it may be worth going to a honda dealer so you know it's right. maybe distributor is toast, maybe leaking oil into cap/rotor? maybe igniter or coil?? do a search here and on honda-tech, you might find your answer.

If the car is runniing with that distro then it's the right one.

Check the cables maybe there bad.

check all your grounds, too, sometimes those go bad and cause all sorts of weird shit. 96 is the first year of obd2. is it possible he wound up with an obd1 distributor?

The shop I went to is a local facility. The mechanic there is someone I've known for years outside of his shop. When I had the cap/rotor replaced the first time, I could tell the cap was used, but it didn't look bad to me..no corrosion/oil, etc. It didn't seem right that the cap/rotor would be bad, as they seemed ok. But, i know the problem is the cap/rotor because when it was replaced the first time, the problem automatically went away and stayed gone until now. I'm just wondering why the cap and rotor would go out so quickly.

If you look at the actual distributor housing there should be a stamp on it. It should say "TD-**U", where the * are actual numbers. What is stamped on your distributor?

yeah i really doubt the cap/rotor are your actual culprits. i once scraped off the contacts of the cap/rotor on a 91 lude si and it started right up, where before it refused to catch. sounds like weak spark. check all your other electrical connections more thoroughly. grounds, plugs, plug wires, hell, maybe the coil/igniter, but those 2 usually work or they don't, not halfway like this. sounds like VPUPPY has an idea for you tho.

I had the same problem in b16a and I foud that the blue tach wire had wiring showing and was arching. But i still had the miss so I replaced the distributor and never ran better -Zach

I checked and the stamp says TD-84U

Well, your car has the correct distributor(TD-84U
was used on 96+ GSR's). I suggest visiting another shop instead of the one that told you that an incorrect dristributor is on your car.

So your saying that your current distributor is buring up the caps and rotors? Like melting them inside? Some pics would help if you could get some.