Maybe anyway.
Daughter Noddaz was on her way to work and the Sentra stopped running. A passing gentleman stopped to help, looked over the car and stated the distributor has gone bad. I ordered a distributor and hope the gentleman was correct. And a virtual high 5 to the person that stopped to help my daughter. Thank you.
And another note on the same thread. Any Nissan gurus here know of a reasonably priced distributor or igniter upgrade for this car?
The distributor itself is an optical pick up. The ignitor takes a logic level 5 volt signal, which just about every Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, and post HEI GM distributor used in the 1990s. Nothing directly plug and play, but a lot that could be spliced in.
In reply to MadScientistMatt :
Thank you.
Totally an aside, and almost unrelated, but...
I had a Nissan in the shop, a pickup, I think, with a 4 cylinder, and it would misfire on startup for a moment, but not always on the same cylinder.
While doing basic checks, discovered that the seal in the distributor was leaking, and there was enough oil inside to fill the low slots in the optical wheel when it would stop. Spin the oil off the wheel, and away it would go.
Optical. I wonder if I can clean the distributor... Sounds too easy to work.
This is an OBD2 car, so get a scan tool on it and look at real time data. No RPM while cranking? Optical pickup problem. RPM but no spark? Ignitor.
In reply to MadScientistMatt :
I didn't think of that. Thank you for the diagnostic tip.
Back to the Sentra, Noddaz daughter wanted to take the distributor off the car and have a look since we planned to replace it anyway. So we grabbed tools and headed out to the car. As Noddaz daughter was removing the distributor I heard something inside the cap moving around. I removed the cap and the rotor screw and rotor fell out. No spark problem solved! Daughter reassembles the car and we crank it till it starts. Problem solved! Now to do something normal. We will change the oil.
This just reaffirms that guessing what is wrong with a car wastes time and money.
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