Hello and welcome back to our mini-series on automotive tips and how to guides for the average Joe. This is a great series of articles if you are new to auto mechanics or maybe you just want to understand a little more about what all goes on under the hood of your car. We've spent a lot of time on tools, but in today's article I'm going to go over your car's distributor. It should be noted that more and more modern car's are switching to distributorless ignition systems which we will be covering in a later article.
The function and purpose of the distributor is pretty direct. It takes the spark that is generated by your car's ignition coil and distributes it out to the individual ignition wires at the proper time to create combustion inside the combustion chamber of each cylinder. Almost all distributor's use a distributor cap, and either a rotor or a set breaker points and condenser to facilitate the distribution of spark energy. As the rotor in the case of most modern cars swings across it's circular arc, the tip of it makes electrical contact with the distributor cap to send the electrical current to the ignition wire and later the spark plug. A points system works in much the same way, but a points distributor system has some very significant drawbacks and hence forth aren't used in modern cars, and even in cars that have been built over the past 30 years. Any problems with contact or oxidation on either of the rotor or distributor will cause random misfire issues and are normally the cause of random misfires. Sometimes random misfires can be caused by other problems such as a bad distributor control module or cracked coil, but 9 out of 10 times, it's normally just the cap or the rotor.
The function and purpose of the distributor is pretty direct. It takes the spark that is generated by your car's ignition coil and distributes it out to the individual ignition wires at the proper time to create combustion inside the combustion chamber of each cylinder. Almost all distributor's use a distributor cap, and either a rotor or a set breaker points and condenser to facilitate the distribution of spark energy. As the rotor in the case of most modern cars swings across it's circular arc, the tip of it makes electrical contact with the distributor cap to send the electrical current to the ignition wire and later the spark plug. A points system works in much the same way, but a points distributor system has some very significant drawbacks and hence forth aren't used in modern cars, and even in cars that have been built over the past 30 years. Any problems with contact or oxidation on either of the rotor or distributor will cause random misfire issues and are normally the cause of random misfires. Sometimes random misfires can be caused by other problems such as a bad distributor control module or cracked coil, but 9 out of 10 times, it's normally just the cap or the rotor.
Labels: Distributor
