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Bad plug causing the distributor to fail?

christine
14 years ago

Please help me!

DHs car would not start last night. It is very damp where we are and I have had distributor moisture issues with this car before. We used a heat gun on the dist cap for several minutes with no luck. He had it towed (thank you AAA) to a place by his work that others have used in the past. The estimate came back at $650. I was shocked to say the least.

They said that a spark plug with too large a gap caused arcing in the wires which went back to the distributor and burned it out. We now have to replace the distributor assembly, distributor cap, rotor, wires, and plugs and we also need an oil change because all the trying to start the car has caused fuel to get in the oil.

Is this remotely possible or are we being taken for a ride? The prices of everything arenÂt terrible (except $40 for plugs!), standard markup over retail and labor isnÂt terrible for what is being doneÂmy question is, could a bad plug cause all this damage? DH asked what was the minimum to get the car running and they said everything listed needed to be done.

I understand how all the parts work, I just never heard of such a problem before. The car is a 94 Honda Civic EX. I have replaced wires once, dist cap twice, plugs a few times. Never done the actual distributor. The car was having absolutely no firing issues of any sort prior to this.

Thoughts? Opinions?

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