Cap is only a couple months old! Reacting with oil or the Lucas stabilizer? G***es not escaping? This thing is disgusting! No wonder I was feeling cylinders drop out intermittently… Thoughts??
Looks like cap or rotor not centered, Do not see oil ,there might be a seal in housing, Vent g***es ,You can drill hole in cap , facing down to ground /road , ( bottom so no Water liquid /oil lies in the cap ) or drill multiple holes. If you see oil in cap , maybe some blow by , oil to thin , are you using synthetic?
Someone else was talking about this this other day, it was to do with humid/coastal air & as @19Eddy30 mentioned to drill a hole in the cap was their solution. The OP was from France, Normandy if I remember correctly. There was quite a conversation about Magneto's in the thread - maybe 2 weeks ago?
Spray the fresh cap with WD-40 inside? It might help absorb the moisture in your area. Another thought, do you actually drive the car? By that I mean a trip of more than 30 miles each week, which should bring everything up to operating temperature and evaporate moisture. Is that cap a good quality item, or made in Ch...a? I hope this helps. Now I'm taking off my dusty thinking cap.
I’m running the Castrol GTX Cl***ic 20-50 for summer use with some Lucas conditioner. I cleaned cap and already drilled the hole as you mentioned. Holy **** what a difference! This distributor is practically new… I installed it a few months ago and have already replaced the cap once, although last time it wasn’t as bad. My thinking was not venting crankcase g***es but as someone mentioned, it’s been humid as hell here in SE Pa recently. The whole distributor is going, I’ve got lateral movement in the shaft already exacerbating the condition by allowing more g***es into the cap. At least I didn’t have to hunt long for the cause of my issues. Thanks for your input!
Yep…been real humid here recently. I did clean cap, blow out distributor and drilled vent hole so I can use it until I get a new distributor. Lateral movement in shaft meaning it’s wearing out already! Play allowing more g***es into distributor as well. Thanks for your input!
I drive the piss outta this thing…every day! Distributor is ****, it’s the cheapy Speedway “pro billet” and the shaft is wearing out already allowing more g***es. That and the humid weather hasn’t helped anything either. Time to pony up the dough and spring for a better distributor. Was on a build budget when I got it, but just got a promotion and raise at work so I’ll be able to afford a good one in about a month. In the meantime, I’ve cleaned it up and drilled some vents and thing woke right up!! Thanks for your input!
Your welcome ,,, When I mention the cap or rotor is not centered , in your photos you can see four poles / contacts are warn back more then the others , so when rotor comes around to other decent contact (minus the corrosion) it was a bigger air gap ,, Put a few mints @ idle Pull cap & see if there contact with rotor & cap poles , there should be a air gap , No contact
So it one of those $70 ish distributors, If so I had one experimenting with and I kept losing / burning up the center graphite to rotor ****on
the rotor should p*** the sides of poles with air gap Not under poles , Length should not really matter I have not used Pertronix brand , just Unilite with no issues
I know a lot of guys that run the Pertronix ignition and swear by them. BUT - it is very important that you follow their instructions as to the proper coil and wires. Let us know how it goes . . .
I will keep you all posted. Just changing out cap, rotor and plugs made a huge difference. Now I have minor intermittent driveability issue which I am going to attribute to the lateral movement in the shaft. Nothing serious but I can feel the difference. Thanks for the input B&S!
Factory ventilation. Never had this issue with the stock distributor. I’m not a fan of the performance of the stock mechanical advance. It’s slower and more sluggish. After cleaning up the electronic ignition and changing out cap and rotor it still out performs the stock dist. There was no vent in dist or cap so I provided a couple…plus with the lateral movement in the shaft I’m fairly certain a higher volume of crankcase g***es are getting past that shaft. I now plan on installing a pcv system… Thanks everyone for the input. I will keep everyone posted. Thank you!!
Well, I dismantled the entire cheapo distributor, a tweak here a tweak there and got it tightened up. One of the issues I figured out was the curve window was too large! Timing was retarded at idle by quite a few degrees. That was because I was only concerned with my overall timing. Well, when I had the dist apart, I put a couple of zingo welds at one end of the timing curve start/stop opening and reduced advance travel. I now have 4deg BTDC at idle and I have my 23deg overall timing. Because I tweaked and closed tolerances it made a HUGE difference! Advance isn't traveling from after TDC through TDC to get to the advance portion of my timing curve, subsequently, it now runs like the proverbial "ape" reference! By drilling the vent holes, I may have eliminated my internal accelerated corrosion problem. I will monitor it to affirm the modification has solved the issue. Thanks again everyone for your input. As always, this stuff is fun!!
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