Potential Astra F distributor failure?

the brush should be spring loaded IIRC (the top of the rotor arm is just flat, so the carbon brush has to touch it somehow) designs with a solid lump of carbon in the cap have a springy leaf on top of the rotor arm.

those distribs were a bit touchy, but it sounds like yours just needs a new cap and arm.

Mrcheerful

JAH formulated the question :

I don't know that car, but all that I have seen have some sort of springy contact between centre and rotor arm. It sounds as if your has worn out/jammed and needs to be replaced. It would cause poor starting and poor mpg.

I would guess at the red dust being the result of burnt brass from the arc between rotor and the four contacts for the plugs.

Try a new cap. Also check for excess play on the shaft of the bit which rotates in the distributer.

Thus spake JAH ( snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com) unto the assembled multitudes:

Not sure if the same has happened to you, but I had a distributor bearing seize up when I had a 1990 Astra 1.4L. The car coughed and *nearly* died but then picked up and kept going. What had happened was that when the bearing seized, the shaft kept turning in the wrecked bearing housing, and the motor kept running although somewhat unevenly. I only discovered the actual problem when I took the distributor cover off a week or so later (!) to find a load of metal swarf inside from the destroyed bearing. I got a mechanic friend to look at it, which was when the seized bearing was diagnosed. He was as amazed as I was that the car had kept going!