I'd like to share two significant experiences I've had with distributors.
Both cars had bad ones and once they were fixed, the driving was
dramatically different.
Back in 1985, my Alpine and I parted while I went to school and it sat in
my folk's driveway. I then bought a Porsche 911. In 1990, I went to get
my Alpine running again. She basically started up and went. It was a
great joy and fun to be driving her again. But, compared to the 911, she
was low on power and really seemed to be in need of a rebuild. Because it
had been quite a while since I had driven it, and my emotions made it seem
good simply because it was running, and I expected the 911 to be different,
I didn't realize there could be something specific wrong. So, I jumped
into it, and because of the low power I figured any Alpine simply needed
more, I went full bore with the dual Webers, Holbay head, Holbay cam and
everything else. Then as I picked up the engine from the shop helping me
on it (after spending all the money on the engine) he commented that my
distributor weights had be rusted and I was not getting full advance. He
fully rebuilt it. My car with all the Holbay stuff of course ran
fantastic. But, in looking back, had that distributor not been bad, I
probably would have been much happier with its performance and I never
would have spent all that money on the Holbay stuff - admittedly a silver
lining.
Now comes my recent purchase of a Porsche 356. I have spent countless
hours trying to get that thing running right. Despite all my work, it just
didn't strike me as anything special, and I simply could not understand
what all the hype was about. And, I certainly couldn't understand why
many 356 owners, even those with more money than they know what to do with,
say they prefer 356s to 911s. I was actually ready to sell it. The number
of things I fixed, adjusted and changed were amazing. As far as the
distributor went, I changed the points (to Pertronix and back) the
condensor, the rotor, the cap, the wires, I even made darn sure those
weights were not sticking. So, I figured if something was wrong, it was
not the distributor. But, in trying to get the Pertronix to work right, I
realized that there was something wrong with the distributor. I got a
temporary replacement in there and the car came to life, it became a
totally different animal. My distributor is now being rebuilt. The guy
told me he found at least two things wrong so far. First, the springs have
weakend so much that even at idle they are allowing the distributor to
advance, so that it fully runs out of advance at 2000 rpm, while it should
go to 33 degrees advance at about 3000 rpm. Also, there are these little
spacers that keep the bottom part of the distributor shaft from lifting and
pressing too hard on the top part of the shaft, and these have worn out.
So, my advice is that you should regularly lube your distributor. You
should also be sure you are getting full advance and it's not coming on too
soon. Check your full advance at high rpm (which I did, by the way, with
the 356 when I started and it was fine. It just must have deteriorated or
something since the car was finally being used again after 20+ years).
Good luck,
Jay
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