honda civic VX Distributor issue repaired

[Gringo-Gaucho]

The Symptom- intermittent misfire/hiccup(especially once at temp), low power resulting in poor drive-ability, frequent stalling when attempting to take off. High idle, and eventually, no start conditions. The car was useless for almost a year while I looked for the issue. Note that I did have spark when tests were run.

The culprit- Our VX sits a lot in the winter. Why force the VX over the snow and ice only to get poor economy and put miles on the car unnecessarily? While sitting in a covered carport, with a little nick in the distributor cap gasket, the steel parts inside began to surface rust. Eventually, the rust particles were attracted to the cap contact for CYL #2 in the distributor cap, which caused a complete misfire on #2. After that was corrected, the car still ran very poorly (but ran). Removing the coil and cleaning its contact points and it's wire connections all but eliminated the problem, and the car ran acceptably with a rare hiccup.
The final Win
Next, the coil was replaced with an NGK unit, and the cap and rotor were replaced with Honda OEM. The car is running stronger now than since we've owned it, with substantially more low end torque and perfectly smooth acceleration. I'm hoping it will be easier to stay in lean burn.


VX's have this issue for a million reasons, this is but one more.