clean distributor and rotor?
 

86 560SEL 96K

is it a bad idea to clean the rotor and distributor contacts?

i gently cleaned the end of my rotor of the black and pitted stuff and same with the distributor contacts. so i guess i might have made the gap slightly larger? what would be the results in performance?

i plan to buy new ones but thought i'd try cleaning just to see if it makes a difference... it hasn't that i can tell. car runs fine except for bit of rough idle which i've been dealing with for awhile. trying to rule out everything i can before acquiescing to my mechanic who says my fuel distributor is defective.

I always cleaned my caps (my current car doesn't have one...) I would just scrape the gunk off the elctrodes. When the car would hesitate on accelleration I would know it was time to clean the cap. The rotor can be a different story if it has a special material on the end. Anyway, if you just scrape the crud off then you shouldn't affect the gap.