yes there is a variety of meters that can test a capacitor.
It would be a whole essay to get into all the parameters to check for and which meters to use, there is no one right answer because the various applications for capacitors and all the specifications are a very wide field.
if i was handed an old distributor capacitor from the junk yard i would do the following (if throwing it out was not an option that is).
1) using a generic ohm meter, set it to resistance on highest setting, check the ohms, a good cap will not leak much.
if i see numbers like 10Kohms or less, i would be worried, but not give up yet, maybe it's a really old cap and the paper based dielectrics are known for small but manageable leaks
2) i would check the metered capacitance at 1KHz and 10KHz on my multimeter, I have a DER EE DE-5004 that can check the capacitance and equivalent resistance at both those frequencies as part of the built in functions, it's not much but it really goes a long way in knowing if a capacitors is still possibly good or just junk.
3) do a voltage test, bring the cap up slowly to it's working voltage limit and see if the current settles to a constant small leakage, there are many online resources for estimating acceptable leakage, and if that fails, just try to anticipate if the absolute leakage is ok for your application
I don't know if that helps or is more confusing
-s
