What did I do wrong and how to do I fix the position of the camshaft to match that of the old distributor that has been replaced. Camshaft does no line up.
1999 Honda Accord 2.3L straight-four engine.
300,000+ miles
automatic trans
old distributor that has been replaced
if you're going to be doing engine work yourself, you really want to have a service manual on hand.
Here is an online one you can use:
Distributor replacement procedure:
I apologize. I'm new here and unsure if even now I'm writing in the correct place.
The car is a 99 Honda accord 2.3 liter with a little over 300k miles. Ran like a champ until this
@mechanics-411 you need to stop pressing the button please. You've created 3 postings that now need to be cleaned up.
@imperator I cleaned up the others, it was quite mess.
@chucktobias I appreciate the cleanup, but what happened to his vehicle info?
@imperator If it was there I did not see it. I've posted a request for the info.
@chucktobias It was in the title. You need to go easy on the delete button tiger. I'll dig it out of my history.
The car is a 99 accord 2.3 litre with a little over 300k miles. I lost spark in the distributor and replaced with a new once. My initial replacement was exactly as you'd expect. Pulling the old distributor paying close attention to how it lined up to the cam. Reinserted very close to the position of the old one. Ensuring the wires where plugged tightly and in the proper order, I tried again. Still no spark or fire. The distributor is receiving power.
Aplogies again for the confusion and trigger happy fingers. Also is has an automatic trans.
@mechanics-411 all good. Thanks 👍
@mechanics-411 No problem, I was obviously too trigger-happy myself! There is a shop manual online for that car which may help, here are the detailed instructions for distributor R&R:
That's an excellent guide for the gas at hand. I immediately notice I set tdc to number 4 cylinder, not number one. Will this cause a no spark issues or just cause the vehicle to running terribly?
@mechanics-411 I don't know for certain on that model but it would not surprise me if there would be no spark with the timing seriously out of whack.
So tomorrow I will be remedying my mistake and setting spark plug wire 1 port to top dead center (ensuring it's during the compression stroke, not exhaust.) till be testing the difference while testing for spark as well. Now It seems my camshaft lays perfectly horizontal, whereas the old distributor rests at about a 45 degree angle (facing the cylinder closest to the distributor.) Do I need to crank until camshaft lines close to where it originally was, then set tdc on cylinder 1? It does not move from its position whilst spinning the harmonic balancer. On that note, I don't know if spinning the balancer does anything more than raising and lowering the pistons.
@mechanics-411 the camshaft should move with the crankshaft. Unless your timing belt is broken
I couldn't imagine after everything the timing belt has slipped or broken. As old as the car is, weve never heard even a slight tick from it. And other than this ordeal have never even messed or had to mess with timing. I'll pay closer attention tomorrow and report my findings. Fingers crossed this isn't a timing job. With this mileage I'm not sure it would be worth it. When cranking the harmonic balancer it is a little stiff to move at first, and then rolls its way around a little easier. I wouldn't know what else would be symptomatic of a broken timing belt. Much to do in the way of figuring things out tomorrow
@mechanics-411 It gets more complicated to deal with cam timing if that's a VTEC (varibable valve timing) engine.
It's a vtec. The ones that run "forever". Besides a starter replacent, a solenoid replacement, and regular wear and tear (brakes, tie rods, ball joints. Sway bar links) and thankfully good lower control arms, it's been a regular maintenance up to this point. Drove like you couldn't break it, though I never tried too. Haha really up to this point the car has been so good to us. Of course when we got it (talked down from 900 to 600 due to a leaking valve cover and a good awful wheel bearing) those needed assistance. It had 250 k. But it's just been an amazing car..