<VV> Points to ponder

[Rad Davis]

The "real men" trick I learned was a piece of vacuum hose behind the 
points.  It worked too, although it was and is a crappy, short-term hack 
with bad consequences for the rubbing block on the points.

I'll agree that there's a place for "ultra engineering" a certain class of 
old car.  But "ultra" and performance tend to be mutually exclusive.

Re the point bounce on the distributor machine - the *best* combination of 
parts I could come up with had point bounce at 4800.  The first one I tried 
went into bounce below 4000.

I would have been incredulous, except that I had experienced exactly this 
on my first "performance" corvair - a '65 140 Corsa coupe.  It would rip 
right up to about 4500 RPM and fall on its face.  I cleaned carburetors, 
zero-lashed valves, changed points (several times).  What cured it was 
changing to an ignitor.  It also cold-started better.

It's distinctly possible that the point springs for the 6 cyl chevy 
distributor we use have gotten weaker in the generic replacement parts of 
decades later.  I'd be curious to try an original set of DELCO points from 
the '60s on the distributor machine.  I would also wonder if DELCO spec'd 
in different points for the 140 from the factory, but didn't list them as 
replacement parts.  It seems like it would be awfully hard for the 
dealership to sell a 140 corvair (with the additional expense involved) if 
the thing wouldn't actually pull harder above 4000 than a 110 would.

Rad Davis


At 01:36 PM 10/28/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 10/28/2005 8:56:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>NicolCS at aol.com writes:
>
> > I recently acquired a distributor machine and I have tested 4-5 Corvair
> > distributors.  Most of them begin to suffer from point bounce over 4000 
> rpm.
> >  The
> > one that's currently on the machine starts to bounce above 3500.  Makes me
> > wonder...
> >
> > Craig Nicol
> >
>******************************************************************************
>***********
>That's because they are old / weakened....time to replace!   OR
>
>Add a piece of foam rubber behind them to stabilize....that's how real men
>did it before girlie transistors came along!!  LOL!!
>
>AH...all this forgotten technology....engineering.....gggggg
>
>The "Dumbing of America"  in action!  LOL!