Distributor Cap Removal

Series Summary

Major car tune-ups, or vehicle overhauls, are vital to the upkeep and maintenance of your automobile. Your car is a complex machine made up of simple machines that have many different parts and processes that must be checked for breakage, leaks, and wear. A mechanic can do all of these checks for you or you can learn how to do them yourself and fix many problems you may find; of course, you can always take your car into a mechanic should you run into a problem that you are not confident you can fix. If you would like to learn how to do a car tune-up, learn from an expert. In this free video series an expert mechanic will show you how to do a basic car tune-up. Learning how to check and repair minor problems on your car could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars over the life of your vehicle. Learn how to remove, inspect and replace the distributor cap, spark plugs and air filter in your car. You will also learn how to check the plug wires and maintain all the fluid levels in your car. If you are interested in simple car maintenance, like a basic tune-up, let our expert show you everything you need to know about automotive tune-ups.

Video Transcript

"We're just talking about tune-ups and the first thing we're going to deal with is removing the distributor cap on the vehicle. Most newer vehicles do not have a distributor cap because they use a distributor-less ignition system, so on most older cars you're generally dealing with a distributor cap, and it's one of the items you have to get when you're doing a tune up. So what you have to do, you have to locate the distributor cap. It is usually, it's at the end of where your spark plug wires go into the assembly itself so once you follow your spark plug wires back you should be able to find your distributor cap. On a four cylinder engine your distributor cap is going to be placed in the front generally, so this is what we're dealing with here today. So what you want to do, it generally has two clips on it, you want to unclip the clips. Maybe if you can't do it physically with your fingers you want to use a screwdriver, you just kind of reach in and pry on the clips and pry them off of the surface of the distributor cap itself. And then once you have those freed up you just kind of gently pull the distributor cap up and you should have it there in your hands and there you have your distributor cap."