Went to check my 90' 3.0 v-6 for tune-up. When I pulled the distributor cap I noticed that some of the contacts were worn down into the plastic while others were wearing normal.

 

Some of the Caps and Rotors to be found these days are pure junk.

I have bought rotors that would not even arc to the cap.

Are the cap contacts burnt or just worn away??

 

Yesh, don't like the sound of that. Post a pic.

Hard to imagine it could be mounted incorrectly.
Grab the shaft the rotor is mounted on and see if you can move it back and forth side to side.

 

Yeah that was my reaction when I saw it. Haven't really got into it yet, but my fear is that it's down inside the motor.that the problem lies. This sucks cause I had just started semi restoring the old girl. I'm the original owner so there's sentimental feelings there. Local mechanics suggested the 3.0 motor had too many problems and said I should just run her into the ground.

 

Well some people feel like that some hate these engines.

Others same to praise them all the time.

If you do need to pay someone to work on these trucks it gets real expensive fast.

Pictures of the cap would be great.

If there was a problem with the distributor it would need to be really bad to cause that.

 

I can't afford that right now. I was hoping someone on the forum encountered a similar problem and give me a definite reason for this condition.

 

I know someone has because I've seen a similar post. I just don't recall what engine it was on or what the outcome was.

Happy searching

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...-issue-183200/

 

As a guess poor quality control on the cap and rotor.

 

Yea, might try an OEM Toyota cap and rotor.

 

No, nothing "in the motor" would cause that.

Put your fingers on the rotor and push gently side-to-side. If there's any sideways movement, I would suspect a worn bearing in the distributor. I even think I read here of someone replacing that bearing, but I would just replace the distributor in that case.

 

Well I did check for play and couldn't feel anything. The issue is that this is a new distributor.

 

New as in brand new out of the Box??

Perhaps the height of the shaft or how the rotor sits is not the correct dimension.

I still say poor quality control or parts packaged or picked wrong.

 

If it's a standard replacement from a parts house AutoZone/Oreilly's/PepBoy's etc. all bets are off in the quality control department.





In the mid 90's I personally witnessed three different distributors (one of my own) that had problems chewing up a cap & rotor set. I also encountered a person who had the same problem with the same combination of parts on a Chevy website. In every case they were the same part number MSD distributors using the Blue Streak cap & rotor.

I also got to examine those three distributors and found nothing amiss with the shaft or bushings. They were newer distributors and the shaft play from side to side was virtually nonexistent. I shimmed the end pay to .015 (.010 for mine) but it didn't make a difference.

That particular distributor was supposed to work with Any early Off The Shelf Chev cap & rotor but for some reason the Blue Streak didn't work. Installing a MSD cap & rotor set fixed it every time. As an experiment I later tried a Well's cap & rotor set and they worked fine. Something was just bad with the Blue Streak parts.