The Ford Barn

s55mercury66 · 04-12-2018, 02:31 AM

I recently got into the centrifugal advance in my FE distributor. While reassembling it, I took a good look at how the breaker plate moves in a different arc than the distributor cam does. It actually plays hell with the dwell. With the points set at .017, I put my meter on it and got 45° at idle, and around 30° with some vacuum at 2000 rpm. I can't be the first person to notice this. While I love my old points and condenser, this is a good reason, IMO, to go to an electronic trigger, like a Pertronix. I will check all this again this weekend. Does anyone have a tuning compromise they use to compensate for this, or is the points setting the compromise itself? I would think the dwell change plays havoc with the coil, if only in voltage output.

04-12-2018, 02:31 AM	#1
s55mercury66 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: SW Wyoming Posts: 155	FE autolite distributor dwell questions I recently got into the centrifugal advance in my FE distributor. While reassembling it, I took a good look at how the breaker plate moves in a different arc than the distributor cam does. It actually plays hell with the dwell. With the points set at .017, I put my meter on it and got 45° at idle, and around 30° with some vacuum at 2000 rpm. I can't be the first person to notice this. While I love my old points and condenser, this is a good reason, IMO, to go to an electronic trigger, like a Pertronix. I will check all this again this weekend. Does anyone have a tuning compromise they use to compensate for this, or is the points setting the compromise itself? I would think the dwell change plays havoc with the coil, if only in voltage output. __________________ Looking for bucket seats and rocker mouldings for full-size 1966 Mercury.