intermittant stalling

[funky technician]

so, my little road apple has developed this habbit of just stalling, at first it did it during rain and i hardly got it home, then it was fine the next day, i replaced the distributor and wires, but not the rotor cap, now its condition is worsening, it hardly idles, it keeps missing and will quit unless i rev it, and its and auto, so its not easy to drive. I also increased the idle set screw to compinsate to keep it from stalling, but it becomming a pain now, the coil is relativly new, so i was wondering, i noticed the rotor cap points were pritty deteriated, but would that cause the who motor to cut out completely? sometimes when im driving highway speed and it cuts out, the engine light will come on indicating a complete loss of ignition, then it will pick up again and be fine for a while. missfire on just a few plugs at a time is what i would expect when you have intermitant firing like a bad cap. Do you guys have any idea what this may be? i really need this car right now

[RhodeStiva]

i would change disty cap its cheap and coil you can find cheap.
and if that doesn't fix it i would play with the disty settings as just loosen a bolt an adjust until it fixes it that is what i did to fix mine.

[funky technician]

i'm gonna try when i get home, its getting really bad now

[WmWatt]

When I saw the title of this thread I immediately thought failing ignition control module. That usually happens after the car warms up and the car will start after it has cooled down again. But then you wrote the distributor was changed. The module can be taken out and tested for free as some auto parts stores.

[FestYboy]

^ Wm, his ICM is external... located nest to the coil.

Funky, look at your Coil for failure (under low rpm high load)... or carbon tracking that would draw spark away from the wires or cap.

[funky technician]

excellent, i was also thinking of some sort of coil failure, i have another coil to try still, but what was it icm? and is it external to the coil? this is awesome guys, were narrowing it down

[funky technician]

ok, whats this little black box thing, it looks like its pritty much garbage, if it controls the ignition in any way, its probibly not working lol, also, its pritty clear that sombody was messing witht he wires,so i soldered and shrink wrapped all the connections as they were, but i don't know if there even hooked up right, those 2 black with white stripe wires get soldered together and go to the big black wire on the coil, can anyone confirm this is correct? alos my car is an 89 fi auto, and this part has a different wiring harness then my 93 fi auto, that one has 2 wires on it, this one has one, so i can't switch them (of course)

[RhodeStiva]

i will show you a picture on how it is suspose to look

[RhodeStiva]

there is 2 wires going into mine.
yours probably went bad and some one did something it looks like i would do.LOL

[funky technician]

mine still only has one wire to it , i figured cause its an 89, my 93 looks just like that, with 2 wires, also, with the 89, my coil is mounted down on the shock tower side, not on top like my 93. so what the name of that box, maybe i can just get a new one, and what does it do exactly? lol

[FestYboy]

that's not the ICM the ICM is in the 3rd pic under the 2 wire connector held in with 2 screws.

[funky technician]

ya, my 93 has that, this car doesn't have one lol, is that wierd?

[FestYboy]

you have an 89..... should have said something. they are totaly different

take off the dizzy cap and rotor, get behind the dust cover and spray the inside of the dizzy with brake clean untill clear comes out, then do it again after a few minutes.

you ICM is inside your dizzy....

[funky technician]

oh ok, thank god! i was gettin nervous that sombody had super hacked the guts out of this car before lol, so what is that little black box then, the one that mine only has one wire to that looks like garbage lol? I actually did clean the dis. out already, and changed the cap, it seems to be working ....well......better....lol

[FestYboy]

that "black box" is a capasitor (condensor). it smooths things out at the coil and are easily replaced. there's typicaly only one wire and the mounting point acts as ground. a 2 wire unit has a seperate ground.