I had the ingenious idea or rebuilding my 1.7 distributor but got stuck when I was trying to pull the trigger plates out. Whats the trick ? Do you have to remove the shaft to get to the trigger plate ?
It looks like the shaft is supposed to be removed from the bottom guarded by a circlip (easy to remove)and a pin thru the drive dog (not easy at all to remove) . How do you get the pin out without destroying the drive dog ?
Also question #2. Are the two counter spings supposed to be different ? Mine are not identical.
And question #3. My breaker plate has some messy broken solder job connecting the upper/lower plate. What was the purpose of that? Click to view attachment Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

You should not need to disassemble the distributor to replace the trigger points. Just remove the two screws and pull.

The solder points are for the ground wire. There are two plates, with ball bearings between them that allow the vacuum advance to move the points back and forth. That ground wire provides the ground for the points. If it is broken or has come unsoldered, the car will misfire as the vacuum advance moves because the ground through the ball bearings is inconsistent.

Towards question three, you could disregard this ground wire if you ditch the points and install a petronix or hotspark pointless module.