96 5.7 hard on distributor caps

[lxe4]

Hello all. i have an old and tired 96 k2500 with a 350. nearly 20 years old and 430 some thousand km. had it a long long time. its always had constant issues but always easy to deal with. one of these being the distributor cap. this thing has been hard on caps since i started driving it 10 years ago. like 6 months each kind of hard. a long time ago i stopped buying them and started cleaning old ones off and putting them back on. they last just as long as a new one before they give me trouble. ive read about ai conditioner hoses dripping on the distributor, mine hasn't worked in years so i doubt thats it, i replaced the distributor with one of those aluminum ones because the original had a lot of movement in the shaft. got about a year out of the new cap that came with that. ive tried adjusting the position a bit and got the cam/crank error code to go away. anyone have this sort of experience? thanks.

environment is northern ontario driven all year between 10000 and 20000km a year

 

[someotherguy]

Vortec caps suck anymore. Gotta buy the best brand you can find.

Richard

 

[skylark]

Vortec caps suck anymore. Gotta buy the best brand you can find.

Richard

X2
I try like heck to find the delco ones.

 

[lxe4]

they really do! in about 08 i bought 2 from napa that had pretty good looking brass contacts, still only lasted like 6 months but pretty easy to knock the fuz off and get going. swapped them back and forth until this year when the brush was becoming the issue. i can't find that eichlan brand with brass anymore. all aluminum junk but still 80 bucks.

where do you usually find ac delco ones? dealer i would imagine? are they widely available or becoming unicorn poop?

whats the leading theory as to why distributors worked well on every engine but this one?

 

[someotherguy]

Using a good quality cap is pretty important as the cheaper ones seem to crap out quickly, however their failure mode is more often that they will crossfire internally.

What may be happening with yours is the vents are plugged up, though I'd find that a little hard to imagine on a recently replaced distributor.

Richard

 

[Rusty Nail]

Yes. Quality over quantity for Vortex caps.

 

[thz71]

Yes. Quality over quantity for Vortex caps.

Vortec*

 

[Dr.Zoom]

I just replaced the Duralast Gold cap and rotor kit from Autozone. Purchased 1-22-15. It was randomly misfiring, but the misfires would clear up after a few minutes. I noticed the misfiring during the last real rainy period we had, then it cleared up when the rain was gone for a few days and came back a few days ago. I just got back from a 5 mile test drive and didn't have any misfires, so that seems to have done it. Knock on wood. I notice the last cap had aluminum contacts. This one has brass. Hopefully it lasts more than 10 months.

 

[lxe4]

if its like mine dont count on it, but at least you can brush the brass guys off and they work just fine. i seem to get like 6-8 months that way. i try to inspect it this time of year before it gets to cold to be fun on the side of the road