distributor oil leak

[mr2-man]

Hello folks - just looking for an answer to the above...

been sorting a slow oil leak in the tubby - which I'm fairly sure is coming from the VC (slow drip at the back of the engine). I've just replaced the VC gasket - waiting on the RTV curing. I'm just looking to rule out the dizzy o rings while I've got the cap and rotor off -

there's no oil in the cap - and no obvious trace of oil staining etc from the bottom of the dizzy. Sounds like a stupid question but I'd assume if there was a leak here, would it be fairly obvious?

Thanks

[MR2DI4]

Basically the external o-ring is easy to replace but is not the main source of the oil leak.

There is an internal oil seal that requires replacement and its a bit of a tricky job.

The whole distributor has a do not disassemble note on it, the reason it you have to fiddle with it on reassembly to get the air gap the right distance between the magnets and the coils. I used some strips cut from business cards of the right thickness as spacers.

Unfortunately Toyota used a standard black nitrile oil seal and not a brown Viton oil seal and its long since dead. Its goes hard and literally falls to bits.

Quite difficult to do and you will notice the coils probably all have cracks in the resin by now and the lugs can literally fall off them on disassembly.

What I did was purchase a used one and reconditioned that (in case I stuffed it up) and put it in the car, then I rebuilt my original one as a spare.

[mr2-man]

Thanks for the reply - but see when your dizzy was leaking, was it obvious?

Heres a pic of the old cap and bottom of the dizzy on the car - no signs of oil. Which makes me hope that it's just the VC

If it's best to.do it anyway I think I'll follow what you did and get an old dizzy which I can recondition just in case it goes wrong!

Thanks

[chrisE]

Just replace the distributor with a professionally reconditioned one, much easier and already cleaned, with new bearings and o rings. The new one turns much more easily if moved by hand.

I've since noticed an improvement to performance since doing this on mine, timing seems spot-on now whereas it was jumping +/- 1 or 2 degrees before..

Here's a pic, the new one is on the left in case you can't tell.

[mr2-man]

that does sound like good advice - where did you get the reconditioned one from?

[chrisE]

I got mine from gt4-play.co.uk. These guys are really good to deal with, and stock upgrades that others may not.

https://gt4-play.co.uk/shop/overhauled-distributor