Distributor
Posted by Mad Scientist on November 21, 2007
Your distributor is where all the action in your motor begins. Air and fuel are waiting to be burned, they just need a little fire to get them started. In basic terms, the distributor is just a rotating light switch that powers one spark plug at a time. The rotor spins and makes one point of contact at predetermined times, based on the engine’s rotation. Each of those points corresponds to one spark plug wire, and in turn to one spark plug. If you’re looking for a quick pick-me-up for your engine, or need to diagnose a misfiring/studdering/hiccuping engine problem, you should probably go through the whole chain, replacing the distributor cap, distributor rotor, spark plug wires, and spark plugs.
In my own experience, this has solved several problems that I simply couldn’t track down and ended up trying random fixes. Ideally, a distributorless coil-pack ignition is the ultimate fix, which removes the moving parts of the distributor as well as the spark plug wires. The result is a more consistent spark with less frequent maintenance.
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