On 25 Jul 2003 14:43:49 -0700, kathy1001n@yahoo.com (Kathy Wang) wrote:

>My car suddenly behaved strangly this week. It stalled when the speed
>was low. And every time when the auto transmission changed gear, the
>rotation of engin dropped sharply, then went up.
>
>Yesterday, the car was totally down. I had it towed to a nearby
>garage. I got a call today and was told the ignitor or module(are they
>same?) and distrabutor hose(?house?)need to change. It will cost over
>$800. I bought my car from a friend who left US after put 20,000 miles
>on the car. The car was in my garage for a year before he finally
>decided to sell it to me. It has only 40,000 miles on it.
>
>Any expert here can help me to figure what's caused the problem? Does
>the cost and fix make sense? Thanks a lot.

Is this a V6 or not? Is this a Honda specialist independent place or a
Honda dealer? The symptom you got is not impossible for a bad ignitor but
not really typical either - they usually go completely dead all of a
sudden. You need to ask:

1) Are they quoting parts prices based on Honda OEM parts? Check the parts
prices here: <www.hondaautomotiveparts.com>.

2) Why does the distributor housing need relaced? AFAIK your car came with
a Hitachi distributor and I don't *think* I've read here that there's been
problems with them.

For the V6, the distributor housing can be purchased separately ($281.58)
or with all its parts ($614.91) including ignitor. The ignitor is listed
at $200.25. You need to find out what they are actually proposing to buy
and replace and how much labor in hours is involved. Even if they use a
complete Honda OEM distributor and charge an hour for diagnosis, their cost
seems very high. If they are going to replace the distributor and ignitor
as parts, it's extortion.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??