Yesterday I took a break from parting out the hardtop to start a tune-up on the '63. The point looked really good for the most part, so I filed the contacts down per the instructions in the shop manual. The condenser looked fairly ancient and they're 8 bucks, so I swapped that out. I tested the coil, and it was definitely a couple ohms higher than what I wanted to see, so I swapped that out as well. I didn't have time to swap the plug wires or clean/regap the plugs, but there's tomorrow for that.
So after I did the fun maintenance stuff, I put my dwell meter on the coil, and found out that I was outside of the shop manual specs by half a degree. so I pop off the distributor, remove the rotor, make an adjustment. Put it back together, and the car doesn't start - I moved it too far! And so the games begin. For about an hour it was the same thing, over and over - Cap off, rotor off, adjust gap, replace rotor, replace cap, start car, take reading. By the time I got it to a half a degree above the minimum setting (close enough, right?!), it was getting dark, and so I didn't get to finish the tune-up. I did pop my timing light on the engine just to see where it's at, and actually with the dwell adjusted it's pretty close.
All that is to say that setting your point is a real pain in the #*%, and when I have the cash saved up, I believe a pertronix unit will be in my future.
So after I did the fun maintenance stuff, I put my dwell meter on the coil, and found out that I was outside of the shop manual specs by half a degree. so I pop off the distributor, remove the rotor, make an adjustment. Put it back together, and the car doesn't start - I moved it too far! And so the games begin. For about an hour it was the same thing, over and over - Cap off, rotor off, adjust gap, replace rotor, replace cap, start car, take reading. By the time I got it to a half a degree above the minimum setting (close enough, right?!), it was getting dark, and so I didn't get to finish the tune-up. I did pop my timing light on the engine just to see where it's at, and actually with the dwell adjusted it's pretty close.
All that is to say that setting your point is a real pain in the #*%, and when I have the cash saved up, I believe a pertronix unit will be in my future.
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