I need some help

So my car likes to stumble and pop anywhere above 5k rpms. Now I have done the plugs, wires, cap, but still have to do the rotor, but the screw is giving me grief. Anyways I had a tach, and when I got on it, the needle would jump like crazy… so now a few years later, I put in a different one, and its doing the same thing. The needle jumps and the car pops and stutters, only at higher rpms. Now I thought maybe my timing is off, but I dont have anyway of checking that at the moment. Maybe the coil in the distro is bad? What else could it be? The motor in question is a d16z6 thats stock besides intake and exhaust.

Needle jumping around sounds like a bad ground.

If it’s only high RPM it’s unlikely to be the coil, coil malfunction would have a misfire throughout the RPM range.

Timing sounds like a potential clause, especially when it’s only at higher RPM.

Z6 is a vtec equipped motor no? If so, it almost sounds like your problem starts as soon as the vtec engages and if the timing is improper then it could suffer from that.

Yes its a vtec motor. So Im really leaning toward timing being the problem. Also on the bad ground, I was using an aftermarket tach, but now have a cluster with a tach, using the factory harness. What I am saying there is that that was two different power and grounds technically, so not sure if that would be the/part of problem.

sounds like your dizzy is taking a dump it will also affect your tach because it reads off your dizzy to operate the pulse signal

Forgot to update this:

slowmarro looked at it for 2 seconds, and said the igniters had melted… So yea, I have another dizzy, just have to swap it in. Hopefully that will solve my problem.

def, slowmarro is pretty good. another +1 for dizzy.