My 97 Sentra just stopped running one day while I was driving it. Before it died, it had been loosing power at take-off and running kinda crappy.
I've been all over the engine with my Haynes manual looking for the cause of death. I've pretty much ruled out the timing chain, but now I think it might be the distributor. (However, the plugs are getting some fire.) When I opened the distributor and removed the sensor dust cover over the camshaft signal plate, I noticed a slight bit of oil and a bunch of rust colored looking dust particles all over the place. The sensor plate itself looked pretty clean and I could see through the little holes in it.
When I followed my Haynes manual troubleshooting guide for the distributor, and checked the coil connector primary resistance between contacts 7 and 8 it was fine, but when I checked for secondary resistance between the contact 7 and the rotor cap there was nothing not even zero reading. I also checked the resistance between the coil connector 7 and the camshaft connector 2 like the manual said, again nothing, not even zero. Could the distributor be the cause of death?
The manual also said to check the ignition resistor, but I can't find it -- anyone know where it is? Baffled.