I've been chasing a miss / bad hesitation issue with my engine for months. I've removed and had the injectors professionally cleaned, new plugs installed,-new wires plus dist cap and rotor are on order blah, blah, blah-- so, ....Saturday I raise the hood and spray degreaser all over the engine (not that it needed it so much, but that it was nice weather , ect) ...I especially sprayed the distributor area, pulled plugs wires one by one (engine running) and sprayed down in the plug shaft--long story/short the car runs like a champ???????????
Sounds like you might have washed off conductive debris. Look at the engine in the dark some time-- especially in foggy weather. Consider spraying your own fine mist if fog is not handy.
Well, if all you did was clean it up, then either something was blocking conduction where there was supposed to be conduction, or there was something causing conduction when there wasn't supposed to be conduction. I don't know specifically what areas you sprayed or what not, however, a relatively common problem on the 16V cars is bad oil seals on the distributor. Used oil tends to be somewhat conductive because it typically has a lot of tiny particles of metal in it. If it gets into your distributor it can play havoc both with spark distribution and with the hall sensor which is pretty critical to determining engine speed/timing.
The bad news is that people have reported very mixed results at replacing the seals, and if you can't get a good seal you may have to get a new distributor which will probably cost around $250.
Look inside of the distributor like blah says. If it is leaking oil............... I have had good success replacing the 16V distributor seals cheaply. Write up on my site (poor pictures though lol).
You might need some spark plug wires too. ;-)
later, dave (>> I've been chasing a miss / bad hesitation issue with my engine for >> months.
Come to think of it there is that oil leak problem with my car-THANKS! Also, I did spray a lot of degreaser in that area and I tugged on that rubber boot attached to the dist cap. Is that the Hall sensor connector??? One more: Is it safe to degrease inside the dist?
I don't see why its unsafe to use degreaser on the inside of the distributor, but I'd recommend letting it dry before trying to start the car afterward. However, if you need to clean the inside of the distributor it means the seals are leaking and cleaning it is a very temporary fix.
Some distributor caps are equipped with a metal shield that goes over the cap (and its supposed to be connected to the base of the distributor, probably doesn't do much if its not). If there is a metal cap on it, there will be a black rubbery cover over the metal. It's supposed to be there, its for electromagnetic interference suppression.
The hall sensor is inside the distributor (you can see it if you remove the rotor and the grey plastic dust shield -- note that removing the rotor on a 16V distributor is a destructive process as its supposed to be glued on) but the connector is the three pin connector near the base of the cap (where it goes to the body of the distributor). Often times the plastic will crack loose and the connector will no longer be solidly attached to the distributor. Theoretically, this isn't a problem, but it can put a lot of stress on the wires that connect to the hall sensor, and the wires are quite small and they will break easily if subject to any force.
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