Need to verify a suspected distributor issue

Need some help again here folks. Car now at 416,000kms and doing alright for being 20yrs old with the exception being the following.

This happens only when its colder and rainy

Symptom Summary:
- Runs fine for about 20min of driving but I begin to notice that additional throttle does nothing. Flooring it on the other hand will provide acceleration, but very little. Idles somewhat ok at this point.
- Within minutes it will start to stutter if I try to maintain speed. Will run smooth if I floor it, but now even less acceleration. Now idles very rough will occasionally, and you can smell it running rich.
- Minutes after that, flooring it barely has any impact other than keeping it running. Will restart, but have to floor it.

EVERYTIME this happens, if I shut the car off for 3-5min, it will start up great and run fine again until the cycle repeats.

What I've ruled out during an episode:
- Choke plate is wide open
- Hot Air door is wide open
- No part of the ignition system appears to have gotten wet

What I've replaced:
- Fuel Filters, both
- Fuel Pump
- Various other bits

I know the distributor is headed out anyway since I do have the jumping tach needle from time to time, BUT, its done that for at least a year now on rare occasions and still runs fine unless it happens to be cold and rainy.

Feedback is much appreciated as usual.

Well replace the dizzy and find out, it will tell you. Maybe its just moisture in the air making your dizzy fail more when its rainy

That sounds a lot like some of the problems I just had with my 3g. After extended driving it would eventually bog down and hitting the accelerator more did pretty much nothing good. Yesterday morning I hit up the local junk yard and was lucky enough to find a recently remanned dizzy for cheap with ignitor and vacuum advance onboard. Tossed it in and it seems have solved quite a bit of my lag problems, though I have not had the chance to take it very far yet. I have not taken apart my old one yet but I am thinking when I get inside I am going to find some pretty mucked up grease on the mechanical side of the advance. Have you tried vacuum pressure testing your vac adv yet to see if it holds or leaks? I know mine was blown out and the bottom end power was non-existent from a start. Maybe if you get the chance, check out your coil too. That's next on my list of potential replacements.

Good Luck

Zero

i'm assuming this is a carb'd motor considering the use of the words, "choke" and, "hot air door" 'cause if it was an EFI i'd look into pulling another MAP sensor off another Accord and seeing what it does then. 'cause if your MAP isn't working, your car's not working.

My thoughts are injection timing,Timing belt maybe, and plugs and wires. If the check engine light is comin on check the code it might be a vacumn leak. If its carbed one of your vacumn line hoses might of riped. Happened to me on my old carb 3 gee i had before.

With regards to this being a carbed car, yes it is. I didn't post in the carb section as I am fairly certain that this issue is unrelated to the carb.

I just swapped in a Hitachi distributor that I had here. Both ports on the vacuum advance held vacuum and the advance seemed nice and free.

I don't have a timing light to set the timing exact so I just eyeballed it by idle speed for now.

I'm about to take it out for a drive now and see how it goes.

I will update.

Well the Hitachi distributor has been doing fine so far. It seems to need a bit more advanced positioning than the TEC one, ie lining up the housings similarly, the Hitachi was definitely a bit retarded.

Finally got my timing light to set it correctly and they are calling for rain Thursday here so that will be the acid test.