Hi all just wanted to post what happened to me over the last couple
weeks. My 94 Altima (167k) starting idling rough after starting it. I
would rev it up and it ran fine. Sometimes after accelerating after a
stop it would run rough as well. This went on for a couple months then
on the way home from work it completely died. I could start it but when
I put it in gear it would die. I had it towed to Nissan. They said the
mass air flow (MAF) was bad and needed replaced, for $700.00. I just
paid them my $100 for the diagnoses and bought a rebuilt MAF for $189.
Installed it and went about 3 blocks and the car died again. I got it
towed home and started testing things my Chiltons suggested. I replaced
the oxygen sensor, no good, replaced the fuel filter, no good, replaced
the coolant temperature sensor, no good, cleaned the throttle body, no
good. By the way the odb showed a code 13 when the engine was cold
(coolant temp sensor). So I tried to start at the beginning again and
started with cleaning the spark plugs and the contacts on the
distributor cap and rotor, again no good. Then I read a post about
problems with distributor caps going bad and decided to run to Checker
and pick one up along with a new rotor ($23 total). Put it on and solved
all my problems. Just want to give those of you with a similar problem a
heads up on what happened to my car. The cap that went bad was not OEM
from Nissan. Oh, and the problem was worse when I got the car warmed up.
I guess the cap expanded a little or something.

i also have a 94 nissan altima and i also experience starting problems ,i work very hard for 2 days and finnaly i was able to find the problem ,the fix was the distributor was getting wet inside due to a worn out o ring ,after replacing the distributor all my problems went away,thanks for your tip of looking arround that area....