My brothers 1996 Toyota Corolla 1.6l Auto w/ 225000km died on him the other day. 2 or 3 days later we went to check it. It was 1L low on oil at the bottom of the hash marks, but I think that should not cause damage. I topped it up and it struggled to start for a moment but it started with a little gas. It ran perfectly. I drove it to his house where it just died suddenly in the driveway while idling. I checked fuel by cracking the fuel rail which sprayed out powerfully. The air filter and air is fine. I decided to check spark next and all of the cylinders were either not sparking or sparking very inconsistently, however I cannot remember exactly which cylinders were doing what. I looked at the rotor and distributor which seemed fine. I checked the ignition coil next and it read 0.6 ohms while the specs are apparently closer to 1.4 ohms. I watched a few videos on this particular ignition coil and decided to replace it as others had said this is a faulty condition. However, now cylinders 2 and 4 seem to fire perfectly, whereas cylinders 1 and 3 are not firing. What could be the cause? I just noticed that things on the distributor that the rotor hits or a bit dirty. I also noticed that the distributor rotor is worn on the edge on only half of the rotor, which seems weird to me. The rotors, cap, and wires are a couple years old, but have not seen a ton of KM. It's a standard motor products but it might be their lower end line. I have also read that on certain designs if the number 1 or number 3 spark plug wires are worn or damaged, it will cause the other to not spark as well.
Make sure there is no lateral play in the distributor shaft that would cause problems between the rotor and cap. If that's OK I'd replace the cap and rotor, ignition wires as well if they're old. Quality of those kind of parts has gone way downhill in recent years so get the better grade rather than the economy line.
I replaced the distributor rotor, still waiting for the cap. But it runs now! The new rotor has significantly more meat on it than the old one. I did notice a tiny bit of play in the distributor shaft, I wonder if that is normal, or if it could be the cause of the distributor rotor being ate up. Because since I replaced the rotor it has been well under 10'000km I believe. Or whether it is just due to the rotor and/or cap being too cheap.
So the car runs, but after a test drive it starts jerking a lot under load, like uphill or hard acceleration, which it never did before. How can I tell for sure if this is the distributor or cap? I do not want to waste money on the cap if the new distributor will come with a cap.