Dear Tom and Ray:

I own a 1991 Toyota Camry that has never been any trouble until lately. Whenever the weather is humid or wet, the car won't start. At first it just stalled. But now it cranks and won't start at all. I should note that I've made a number of maintenance adjustments in the past year. I've put on a new timing belt, new spark plugs and new spark plug wires. I fear I may have done something to break the car in the process. Did I? -- Pete

Ray: I doubt it. This is one of those good news, bad news scenarios, Pete.

Tom: Yeah. The good news is that you didn't do anything to break the car. The bad news is that it might be cheaper if it were something you HAD screwed up yourself.

Ray: Based on the age of the car and my vast (or half-vast) experience, my guess is that you have a bad coil in the distributor. The coil is bad, so the spark is using the moisture as a conduit and is going directly to ground, instead of to your spark plugs. And we've discovered that the best remedy for this is to replace the whole distributor.

Tom: And a distributor for this car costs about $400, plus labor. You could just replace the coil. But if the coil is bad, then other parts of the distributor are probably going to fail soon, too. And by the time you've replaced them individually, you'll spend more than 400 bucks on parts.

Ray: But it just wore out, Pete. Unless you dropped the old one or smashed it with a hammer while you were under THE hood, you had nothing to do with this.

Changing your oil regularly is the cheapest insurance you can buy for your car, but how often should you change it? Find out by ordering Tom and Ray's pamphlet "Ten Ways You May Be Ruining Your Car Without Even Knowing It!" To order, send (check or money order) to Ruin, P.O. Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475. You can also order online.

© 1998 by Tom and Ray Magliozzi and Doug Berman Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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