dodge / chrysler / mitsubishi colt 200 1989

Hello again Tanya. Glad to see you found these newsgroups. People here are very helpful and I am sure that someone will have a Colt service manual or have owned one at some point so you should get some good advice.

As to the ignition rotor, this is inside the distributor cap and this is where the ignition wires terminate (spark plugs on one side, ignition cap on the other). The rotor spins on the distributor making contact with the rotor caps terminals at the appropriate time to send high voltage electric pulses to the spark plugs through the cable and fire at the appropriate times to detonate the fuel air mixture (after the compression stroke). On older vehicles there were something called "points" that actually had small contacts on them that made/broke as the distributor turned thereby generating the low voltage electric pulse that was transformed into the HV signals by the HV coil. If your vehicle has points then these should have been replaced and re-gapped along with replacing the distributor cap and rotor. Most vehicles today have "breakerless" ignition so rotors, points, and the cap are no longer moving parts and a distributor is no longer used. I do not know what your vehicle has since it is old enough to still use the old design or have been a modified version that did not have points.

Good luck!

Bob

i don't know whether it has points or not..."points" are not mentioned in the owner / user manual. i do understand the above -- thank you -- so replacing the ignition rotor would not imply that the ignition wires were replaced i assume (just wonder because the waterInTheTank theory sort of fell apart yesterday (still lags and vibrates) and i read that this could be due to worn ignition wires) thanks again! sincerely Tanya

-- to reply: userName: tjtmd domain: attglobal.net and separate the 2 words with the at sign:)

thats right... It's a mitsu, so the key thing won't work.....just like if you tried it on a Talon or Stealth.