Dino Saga 060312___Distributor rebuild

Dino Saga 060312___Distributor rebuild

Moved these “Dino Saga” threads from Tech to Vintage. Posted an Index. Comments?

Thought that the distributor might be good subject for a couple of weeks. I’ve had quite a few adventures in the past 20 years. I bought the car at 51,000 miles and drove it another 15,000 before I had any missing due to anything other than plugs. Ran Champions then; 5,000 miles and hard to start. Finally got a persistent miss and checked the points. There was wear on the rubbing block and points were barely opening. While adjusting points I noticed that the cam could wiggle side to side. That did not seem right so I pulled the distributor and took things apart. Looked like the distributor had not been apart; ever! There was no sign of grease on the advance mechanism, holes in the weights were elongated but the floating bushings looked pretty good. When I pulled the cam off of the drive shaft, the bronze oilite bushings were worn through and the steel drive shaft was worn egg shaped.

I had access to a great machinist so I had him grind the drive shaft from 10mm down to 3/8”. Then he bored out the cam bearings, pressed in 3/8” bushings and we were back in business. I bought new weights. They only had one spring hole and were made of brass, not bronze. Called the supplier and he said they work fine for highway driving. I had found that 1000 rpm was a reliable idle so I figured why not? When everything went back together I spun it up to 2500 RPM on the bench and the advance went smoothly up to about 15 degrees using the heavier springs. I had a calibrated strobe light so could see what was happening. Looked for someone with a distributor machine but no one wanted to make an adapter. Just put the thing back in the car and ran until points wore down again. Lubed everything and replaced points. Ran with occasional lube to about 100,000 miles and pulled apart again. Brass had worn at pivots and at spring cup. Cam drive pins were not hardened, had eaten up slider bushings and wore badly. No good.

Decided to try homemade weights. Machine shop had some scrap Berylliun Copper so tried that with hardened pins. Fine for another 20,000 miles when engine suddenly stopped one day. Coasted to shady spot and pulled out my trusty meter. Points were shorted. Got out my tool kit, pulled the distributor, pulled off the cap and discovered that advance drive pins had loosened, worked their way up and touched the auxiliary points mounting plate screws. I had long ago disconnected the idle points so cut the wire going to the normal points, replaced the distributor, started up and drove home.

Pulled distributor again and took everything apart. Pins had eaten into the aluminum bulkhead the points are mounted on. Area under regular points was still OK but the idle side was pretty bad. Pulled idle points permanently. Drove pins out of weights, crushed ends of weights a little and pressed pins back with LocTite. Drove like that for another 60,000+ miles. Pics show original weights, brass weights, my sketch, beryllium copper weights, idle points, hardware. More next week.

John
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Rob moved everything last week. It's all on Vintage now.
Thanks,
John