CR-V eating distros?
 

So a relative has a '98 or '99 CR-V that's *apparently* recently taken to killing distributors. From what I've been told, a mouse got in under the dash and chewed some wires, and after those were repaired/replaced, the distributor kacked (at this point, I have no idea what that means, exactly, or how it was determined that the distro was actually dead - so far, the only actual mechanic that's looked at it is my half-brother, who's a Porsche nut, so he's probably handicapped when it comes to riceburners).

They've apparently replaced the distro a couple times now with used units, both of which have also died... whether immediately or after a period of time, I don't know yet, either; trying to get details out of the bro is an exercise in futility (if it didn't come from Weissach, after all, it's no better than a tin can). They've now bought a new distro but haven't installed it yet for fear of killing it as well.

Aaaaaaanyway... they've offered to sell it to me for $1000 (thing is in amazing shape, the previous owner babied it with better-than-scheduled maintenance), but I wanted to see if anyone here had any suggestions of where to look for the source of this distro hunger it has... or if it's even possible for something else in the wiring to be doing this kind of damage. I'm pretty technically adept; I did most of the under-the-hood work on my Accords and even did a complete rebuild on my first car, a 1980 Mazda GLC... from everything I know, it SHOULDN'T be possible for this to be happening the way they think it is... but maybe there's something specific to these models that I'm not aware of and should be looking into??

The car is about a three-hour drive from home, so I'll be looking to put the new distro in and drive it home if I end up buying it... I'm told that this machine would go about 1000km before the used distros gave out... specifically, "It runs like a charm for around 1000 km. THEN it starts to lurch as if you have dirty gas in the vehicle and then it just stops!"

the wires probably weren't replaced right, sounds like a short

coil packs FTW

Yup, if you want to DIY, you'll have to do a bunch of research. Get all the diagrams and start tracing wires. Wouldn't hurt to take the broken distributors to test what failed on them first though.

I just can't think of what would instantly fry a distributor (or more likely just the ignitor), but not until it gets to around 1000km... doesn't make sense that something would suddenly and repeatedly pooch after some significant driving.

Well, picked the CR-V up this weekend... installed the new dizzy they had... fought for a bit with the proper plug wire sequence (since the Haynes manual seemed somewhat contradictory, or at least confusing), but finally got it going smoothly.

Now I've got the following info from my brother about what he's figured out before:

From what I can find in the Haynes book (page 12-71), there are three sensors - TDC, CKP and CYP - and all them have only two wires connecting back to the PCM. The other unit is the ICM, which has four wires. Forgetting for a moment that it seems silly to have anything operating at 5V in a car system in the first place, the only one that seems to fit this description is the ICM itself; the test procedures I found the sensors on Autozone, say to test them by measuring their resistance, which to me would indicate a coil, not a Hall device (which based at least on the ones I've worked with in the past, tend to be either ON or OFF).

Anyway, wondering if this makes any sense to anyone, or if there's some better documentation of what lines (if any) are actually carrying +5V. I don't mind running new wires if I need to, but I'd rather not have to run ALL of them...

Are there any more good sources of tech info for this thing (schematics and such), besides Haynes and Autozone?

All that aside... this things runs really smooth. Or the engine does, anyway... I think one tire may have a flat spot, and/or it needs some suspension work, from the shake it has. At the very least, it's going to need an alignment, and probably some new tires. But on the whole, it's in great condition. ODO reads 419,000km, although I'm told that's on the high side because the original owner was handicapped and ran undersized tires (205/60R15) so it would ride a bit lower.