What causes caps to wear out?
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Joined: Apr 2001
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From: Bayville NJ and Newark at NJIT.
What causes caps to wear out?
I've been tracing this miss around for quite a while now... it's only under no-load or light-load situations. I just pulled my distributor cap and each terminal has a white substance on it. I assume it's bad? I'll clean it, but I wanna know what causes this. My ignition coil tests out OK, and my battery is charged. My alt charges as well although it's going to need to be rebuilt soon enough... my plugs are standard delco's.
I -did- have only one injector replaced a while back, and it's been carboning that plug a little bit more than the others, so I shortened the gap a little on just that one plug to compensate. The miss started well after the injector, and before I shortened the gap however.
Cap, rotor, wires are all about 5 months old, the plugs are about a month old.
SO HELP ME TRACE THIS DOWN! It's so annoying... when the miss is bad, and it's not regular either like a dead cylinder...
Last week when my FP was dead I took a screw driver, disconnected a spark plug boot and shoved the screw driver in it... I sat the handle of the screwdriver on the plenum, and positioned the shaft so it was about, oh i dunno it was about a quarter of an inch away from the plenum... I cranked... the spark was whitish, a creamy nasty color... and I noticed it would skip a beat every so often... is this a sign of a dying coil??? but my coild checked out ok with a DMM!!
My readings with the DMM were as follows... (in clockwise order, starting from the top left most female plug if you have the ignition pole piece at the top. I'll number them 1, 2, 3, 4...)
test 1) female plug connector #1 to the metal windings on the coil... I either didn't get a reading or my DMM saw infinite...
test 2) between female plug connectors #3 and #4, I read 0
test 3) between female plug connector #2 and the ignition wire pole piece. I read 8.45Mohms... ( assume M is for mega) (the book calls for it to be high, but not infinite)
So I dunno, you tell me what the deal is, any advice will help...
EDIT: typos...
------------------
1985 Camaro SC - 2.8L, auto.
C'mon, spin 'em for papa...
http://www.xenodrgn.f2s.com/Frontright.jpg
[This message has been edited by Xenodrgn (edited October 06, 2001).]
I -did- have only one injector replaced a while back, and it's been carboning that plug a little bit more than the others, so I shortened the gap a little on just that one plug to compensate. The miss started well after the injector, and before I shortened the gap however.
Cap, rotor, wires are all about 5 months old, the plugs are about a month old.
SO HELP ME TRACE THIS DOWN! It's so annoying... when the miss is bad, and it's not regular either like a dead cylinder...
Last week when my FP was dead I took a screw driver, disconnected a spark plug boot and shoved the screw driver in it... I sat the handle of the screwdriver on the plenum, and positioned the shaft so it was about, oh i dunno it was about a quarter of an inch away from the plenum... I cranked... the spark was whitish, a creamy nasty color... and I noticed it would skip a beat every so often... is this a sign of a dying coil??? but my coild checked out ok with a DMM!!
My readings with the DMM were as follows... (in clockwise order, starting from the top left most female plug if you have the ignition pole piece at the top. I'll number them 1, 2, 3, 4...)
test 1) female plug connector #1 to the metal windings on the coil... I either didn't get a reading or my DMM saw infinite...
test 2) between female plug connectors #3 and #4, I read 0
test 3) between female plug connector #2 and the ignition wire pole piece. I read 8.45Mohms... ( assume M is for mega) (the book calls for it to be high, but not infinite)
So I dunno, you tell me what the deal is, any advice will help...
EDIT: typos...
------------------
1985 Camaro SC - 2.8L, auto.
C'mon, spin 'em for papa...
http://www.xenodrgn.f2s.com/Frontright.jpg
[This message has been edited by Xenodrgn (edited October 06, 2001).]
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