Use locktite on rotor screws

[paintdudeluke]

Today I was jammin along and felt a gnarly clicking through the shifter stick for about 5 seconds and then POP, and the car died. I rolled to the side and began my assessment. 1) cam belt ok 2) pull distr cap and check if it seems normal, cap off, guts fall out. Evidently, over the last 10k miles one of the screws holding the rotor down came loose and finally backed out enough to hit and snap off the cap contacts and of course disintegrate the rotor. I put my old pre-tune up cap and rotor on and it was all good, but I never expected that to happen. I know I snugged them up tight, so the moral of the story? Use a little blue locktite or super glue on the rotor screws.

[bradartigue]

Pretty sure they had lock washers on them from new. Most are lost and never installed again.

[vandor]

Not uncommon with Spider 2000s. Always good to have spares in the trunk!

[paintdudeluke]

Its funny how one thing always leads to another. It was running crappy after I replaced the cap and rotor because the timing got kicked down about 15 degrees when the rotor was hammering the cap. So when I was timing it it got warm and the fan kicked on and I noticed that the fan sounded like hell because the blades were clipping the shroud. Closer inspection revealed that the fan motor was basically falling apart and all sloppy. So I replaced the fan with a nice 12" electric aftermarket unit. WOW its quieter, lighter, moves more air, and costs less. I can also get the the belts and see my timing marks much better. I'm not going to get into how I caused a nice leak in the core when I was shoving the zip-tie thing through it to secure the new fan and had to do a JB weld patch in that spot, but all in all, the roto cap problem ended up accomplishing the following: New cap and rotor ] new electric fan ] cleaned up simplified wiring mess ] radiator all pretty with trim black ] nicer general appearance and more space around the front of the engine.

[rebar1111]

Talk to me about the rotor/cap hammer.
I am experiencing dying and quick recovery on hard acceleration . Both cap and rotor are new.
At one time in the past, the new rotor contact got mangled in operation but the engine died and the rotor was replaced.
This leads me to believe that the cap is out of spec. Am I right?

[paintdudeluke]

When I say "hammer" I am describing the feeling when the rotor was physically hitting the cap. in my case one of the screws backed up out of the rotor. When it finally reached the cap contacts it simply disintegrated the rotor and underside of the cap. No off and on, I heard and felt about 20 or 30 strikes through the shifter ( like 30 rounds out of a tommy gun) and then it just self destructed.

What you're describing is not this. I would suspect maybe the module inside the cap might have a crappy wire grounding out as if the centrifugal advance weights are tapping bare wire when they expand? It might be fuel too, usually electrical problems are fairly consistent. Also check the plug on the MAF box. Sometimes a bad connection can cause a symptom. I has one die every time I took a left turn. It was a lose wire grounding my coil contact on a hard left. Talk about a bitch to discover the culprit on that one.

[rebar1111]

I originally thought carb tuning was the problem, but $450 later had the same problem.

My original failure showed itself as a twisted rotor terminal rom hitting the cap contacts, Replacing the rotor left me with the current problem.

I will check the dist internal wiring for shorts and replace the cap. No MAF since it is carbed.