Quote:
Originally Posted by redmodelt
I was thinking about the upper plate last week. The wear area would be both the plate and casting centering hole.
|
Look at the distributor casting where the fingers of the top plate rotationally slide. You might be surprised at how worn the casting is, compared to wear of the top plate. Over the years, the top plate has likely been replaced multiple times, but never the distributor casting itself, so most of the wear you will find is in the distributor housing. Any movement that changes orientation of the plate to the center can have an effect on point gap. Enough to be concerned about ??? Perhaps not.
As Bob started this discussion about cumulative tolerances that may be out of the restorers control, I just wanted to point out several that we can minimize or eliminate, such as a good cam (Sipes, perhaps) or finding a good distributor core with minimal wear.
These cars are so hardy that I also think that we can get ourselves overly concerned with point gap that is off by a few thousands, or timing that is off by a few degrees. We all know that these cars will run with the point rubbing block worn to the point the points barely open, and timing that is slightly off and compensated for with the spark advance lever.