How to set breaker points?

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Since no one's answered your question, here it is.

Get you a decent little dwell meter. Get familiar with it, hook it up. Only two wires. Ground and negative side of the coil. With the cap off, find the "notch" that's made up of the points and the breaker plate. The breaker plate is the flat plate that everything is mounted to in the distributor. Get an appropriately sized screwdriver that will fit in the "notch" and allow you to manipulate the points. Now, loosen the screw(s) that hold the points down ONLY enough to allow you to move the points with the screwdriver. You'll need to play around with this to get it just right. Too loose and the points wont stay where you put them. Too tight and you cannot move them. When you get that right, have someone get inside (in park or neutral with parking brake on) and spin the engine over while looking at the dwell meter. Now you will want to twist the screwdriver to either give more or less dwell depending on what the meter shows. You're aiming for 28 to 32 degrees on the V8 scale. Once you get it there, tighten the points and recheck. Sometimes they move out of spec as you tighten them and you have to readjust. Just keep at it. To me, a dwell meter is 10 times more accurate than a feeler gauge, because you can easily stick the feeler gauge in crooked. Plus, you don't have to remove the distributor. Just play around with it and get used to how it reacts as you make changes and you'll get it.
 
Since no one's answered your question, here it is.

Get you a decent little dwell meter. Get familiar with it, hook it up. Only two wires. Ground and negative side of the coil. With the cap off, find the "notch" that's made up of the points and the breaker plate. The breaker plate is the flat plate that everything is mounted to in the distributor. Get an appropriately sized screwdriver that will fit in the "notch" and allow you to manipulate the points. Now, loosen the screw(s) that hold the points down ONLY enough to allow you to move the points with the screwdriver. You'll need to play around with this to get it just right. Too loose and the points wont stay where you put them. Too tight and you cannot move them. When you get that right, have someone get inside (in park or neutral with parking brake on) and spin the engine over while looking at the dwell meter. Now you will want to twist the screwdriver to either give more or less dwell depending on what the meter shows. You're aiming for 28 to 32 degrees on the V8 scale. Once you get it there, tighten the points and recheck. Sometimes they move out of spec as you tighten them and you have to readjust. Just keep at it. To me, a dwell meter is 10 times more accurate than a feeler gauge, because you can easily stick the feeler gauge in crooked. Plus, you don't have to remove the distributor. Just play around with it and get used to how it reacts as you make changes and you'll get it.
Perfect. The thing no one asked is why the op was adjusting point gap. May be the engine was built with a big cam and he is trying to smooth the idle out. May be it has a bad plug or a plug wire pulled off. Who knows. I don't think I ever read what the issue was.
 
Perfect. The thing no one asked is why the op was adjusting point gap. May be the engine was built with a big cam and he is trying to smooth the idle out. May be it has a bad plug or a plug wire pulled off. Who knows. I don't think I ever read what the issue was.
He did say it was running badly. Maybe we can at least help him eliminate the points as a source of that. Oh and one thing I forgot to add.....make sure the faces of the points are CLEAN and not burned or pitted all to hell and back. You might even get a small file and file them so that they have a fresh surface area if they need it. If you don't have a point file, an emery board works very well.
 
He did say it was running badly. Maybe we can at least help him eliminate the points as a source of that. Oh and one thing I forgot to add.....make sure the faces of the points are CLEAN and not burned or pitted all to hell and back. You might even get a small file and file them so that they have a fresh surface area if they need it. If you don't have a point file, an emery board works very well.
Bad condenser? Most of the new ones are bad right out of the box.
 
cond bad.png
 
Very possible. Normally though, they won't run at all....but every now and then you get one that runs like infected dog butt.
Depends, Shorted it is dead, open can pit the points and change the dwell drastically. Run from the new stuff for sure.
 
Depends, Shorted it is dead, open can pit the points and change the dwell drastically. Run from the new stuff for sure.
Unfortunately, I agree. That's why I tell these guys constantly to hawk ebay.....and you for old NOS made in USA stuff. I do it for engine parts all the time.
 
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