My beloved Mazda had been reluctant to start during the rain and on cold mornings, and now it just doesn't start.

I don't know much about cars so I had my uncle look at the car. He discovered there's no spark at the spark plugs, but there is a spark from this long stud under the distributor cap to the rotor when my uncle turned the key with the cap off.

For what it's worth, it has a 4 cylinder engine with about 190k miles, manual transmission, and the car has compression.


Thanks for anything you can offer to get her (and me) back on the road.
If you don't know quite what the problem is, could you point me in the right direction?

 

I would replace the distributor cap and rotor. It sounds like there is a problem in the cap as the ignition coil is inside the distributor. The spark cannot make connection through the cap.

 

So I don't quite understand did you replace the spark plug wires?

Anyway, you are describing the classic need for a tune up. When your spark plugs get gummed up or the plug wires go bad, the car will studder especially at idle. And wet weather studder is usually a sign of bad plug wires or a bad cap.

It is usually about 60 bucks to just redo the whole thing so it can't hurt to replace cap, rotor, plugs and wires. Heck take it to a shop for a tune up I bet you can find a deal for 60-100 bucks. It is just like an oil change. Just Tune up every 30-60K miles.