Hey guys, finally got back home again from college to try and get the IROC running after the heads and cam swap.

Still having issues with idle, and overall running like crap (although I DID get her to run a tad smoother than before, no uncontrollable bacfiring).

Question is, should the distributor rotor terminal strip be covered in soot? It's just something that caught my eye and didn't look right.

Got a crappy picture from my phone, take a look.





That black stuff in the center of the rotor is the soot. There was a bit more, I wiped off a little bit because I wanted to see what it was, and it was infact soot.

 

that is completely normal.

 

Alright, back to the drawing board. Thank you.

 

That "completely normal" soot is carbon. Carbon conducts electricity. causes the spark to go to a ground point (short) instead of jumping the sparkplug gap and fireing the combustion chamber. Replace the rotor and cap. Inspect the center pin in the cap uner the coil. If you're using a high output coil replace the center pin with a solid pin form MSD.

Very common cause of misfireing.

 

Exactly....

Completely normal, for a well-used rotor at the end of its service life.

A rotor is, what, $2.50 or something? And you've already done about 95% of the work required to change it. Why is that old worn-out one still there?

 

I wasn't sure if it was normal or not, hence why I am asking now. I rarely get home from school to work on this (the swap went in a week before I went on vacation, and I had to go to back to Rutgers right afterwards), and this is just one thing that I thought might be causing my issue of missing, which it sounds like might be a large contributor.

I also noticed that the two wires inside the cap going to that module that is attached to the base are eaten though. I'm just going to get a new OEM distributor and see if that helps any.

Thanks for your guys insight, I really hope this works out.

 

im not sure how may rotors everyone else has seen, but from what i see in that picture, its not worn out, thats what they look like when they get around 10~15,000 miles on them, you ever you one with 100,000 miles on it?
if most of that area is covered, then that can cause problems.

maybe i'll feel like changing my cap & rotor tomorrow & post up a pic of what one with 80,000 miles on it looks like.

 

ok, here is what a delco rotor looks like at around 80,000 miles.
it did have a little more soot in it, but i dropped it on the shop floor.
its not worn out
the button in the cap has some wear, but it also is not worn out, there is still enough of the button left to hold the cap up some off the distributor.
there is some deposit build up on the terminals inside the cap for the plug wires.
my car doesn't miss, run bad, stall, surge or anything else with these parts in it.
i just made about a 500 mile round trip with this rotor in my car.
i averaged 21 MPG going up from Houston to just outside of Tyler, just under 25 coming back. i had the cruise set at 95 for a while during the trip up.

i will admit, i should have asked about the bluish color on the rotor in his pic, but i just figured it was because of his camera, like mine has some yellow in it because of my camera.

 

i change my cap and rotor every spring.. i get the most expensive $10.00 kit..

 

Same here, for what its worth (fvck all) i swap out the cap/rotor/wires and plugs at least once a year.

 

Yeah mine did look similar to yours, but like I said, I wiped a bit of it off to see if it was soot, or burnt plastic. I'm really stuck after this though, if it's not the distributor thats causing the issues, I dont know what it could be.


Also, the two wires, orange, and green, going to the module on the bottom of the base look chewed through on the ends...I'm sure this has to cause some sort of problem. What do you think about that?

 

Check for chaffing on plug wires.

how bad are the wires chewed? and how close to the boot/connector?
This could be the problem. any chewed up wires are bound to cause a problem...

 

a weak pickup coil can cause all kinds of problems.
if the insulation is falling off the wires ts time to replace it for sure.

how was it running before you did the heads & cam?

 

Im not referring to the plug wires here, im talking about the two wires that run to a module that is located under the distributor cap.

The pickup coil, is that the module under the cap?

Oh man it ran beautifully before the swap, which is why i was hesitant to start pointing fingers at the distributor you know?

 

the pickup coil is what plugs into the module inside the distributor.
the module is the black rectangle looking part thats bolted down in the distributor

i believe its the pickup coil that your talking about that has the chewed up wires on it.

it could be a problem with the distributor, as long as it was left alone in the motor it was happy, but when you pulled it out it got bounced around & laid on its side. the wires had a little different stress put on them & started to loose their insulation.

 

Ok then, thats what that is called.
Well, I hope that this is what is plaguing me here, because I am stuck after this.