I bought a new cap and rotor with brass contacts for my Blazer. As I was taking the rotor off I discovered one of the screws has been snapped in half this whole time. The other half is stuck threaded into the distributor. So I took the new rotor and just screwed the one bolt in very tight and made sure it did not wobble and left the half of bolt in there not holding the rotor on. Then when I went to put my cap on the part of the distributor where the cap screws into on the front was messed up and half of it was missing, a chunk of the threaded part was not there. I put the back screw in and it screwed tight like it should. The front screw I was able to somewhat tighten with what was left of the threads. It does not wobble. Will this be fine? I test drove it right after and it ran just fine.

 

If it seems to be working, you might just leave it.

If you are worried about it coming loose on a long trip, I'd suggest you regularly check it to ensure it is snug.

And if you do have any issues with how the engine runs, your cap and rotor should be the first thing you check.

BTW, the conventional wisdom on the forum is that only ACDelco cap and rotiors will do.

 

Yeah hopefully it will stay I do not want to replace the distributor. I tried to move the rotor around and then also the cap and they did not have any play. I do not think that they are under much force so hopefully it will be okay but I will definitely keep and eye on it and check it every so often. Thanks for advice.

 

If you do need to remove the distributor, it is possible to do so and get it back in still aligned. If need to do this post a question here first for advice and the tricks. It can save lots of effort later.

 

I have discovered I have a p1345 engine code. I cleared it and started the car again and it turned on right away. Certain this is from my cap and rotor job, what is causing this? I see most with p1345 have a misaligned distributor but how did this happen? I did not mess with the distributor.

 

Perhaps the cap and/or rotor are off center? Possibly the distributor bushing is worn. These are just guesses. Perhaps someone else can help more.

 

I was thinking that yes maybe the rotor is not centered since I only have one bolt holding it on. I was thinking that maybe I need to take it off and make sure to screw it back on tight with the other bolt hole lined up with the threads on the distributor and eyeball it very close.

 

So, if you do take the distributor out to work on it, this is the advice I would give:

• This almost goes without saying but do not rotate the crank of the engine with the distributor out. (I think you would know that! )
• Before removing the distributor, mark the position of the rotor with pictures and/or a Sharpie pen so that you can see if you got it back in correctly. The reference mark for the rotor alignment can be on the outer rim of the distributor since the body of the distributor cannot be rotated once it is installed and clamped in place.
• Because the distributor is run from the rear end of the cam shaft, there are spiral gears on both. This results in the the distributor shaft rotating about 30 degrees as it is removed.
• When you drop it back in, the trick is to compensate for the rotation due to the camp and distributor gears engaging so that when it gets to the bottom the blade on the bottom of the distributor shaft drops into the slot into which it mates on the top of the oil pump shaft.
• If the distributor won't drop in the final bit, it is likely that the oil pump shaft has been rotated out of alignment when the distributor was removed. You can rotate the oil pump shaft back a bit with a wide flat-bladed long screwdriver. This is what I had to do.
• If the crank is rotated, then you have to find top dead center and have the engine do a complete relearn of the cam and crank position.

I only took a quick look at it, but this video looks to have some good info.

Let's hope you don't need to take it out!

 

Thanks for the information! I watched the video and it explained it very well. Hopefully I won’t have to work on the distributor but if I do this makes it a lot easier.

 

Got under the hood today and the rotor was indeed a little bit off centered. I made sure to eyeball the stuck screw as I tightened the one screw to get it as center as possible. I erased the code and I started up the car, it was hesitant to start, and then the check engine appeared 3 seconds later again. Tomorrow I am going to do a Cam/Crank relearn with my friends D9S Pro Scanner and hopefully that fixes the issue. It is definitely running rich now, it smells of gas and I somehow burned a whole gallon of gas in the 12 miles I drove today.