I was working on my distributor and I could hear something rattling around inside the distributor. I check the top, put new points and rotor in there nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Then I gently took the vacuum cannister off and this little ball bearing fell out. Now where in the hell would this go. The cannister holds a vacuum. The bearing has no signs of wear on it what so ever. Can't be good when something falls out of a part.

There is a bearing between the points plates. See images.

BTW- that is a 33 year old 100,000+ mile points plate in the images. Note the wear on the vaccuum arm post in the close up picture. Other unseen wear: The lower plate is ovaled out where the two plates attach to and rotate against one another (this will cause your dwell to oscillate). There is a deep groove in the bearing rolling surface. The grounding jump wire which had previously been repaired finally fell off (will cause missing at high rpm and erratic tach needle as the two plates vibrate and no longer make contact between each other). John

That plate is NG anyway, if you're running points. No ground strap. Note what appears to be a POS aftermarket condenser, too. The plates are available.

The Cap'n

cap'n i think the plate shown was just for demostration of where the ball goes!

Thanks for the replies,,, I checked to see if there was a little bearing as shown in the image above, there wasn't any bearing in there, so the bearing that fell out now resides in its proper place....

Thanks very much for your help

It could be from the ol' "BB in the vacuum hose" trick. Done to plug up a vacuum line when some PO or mechanic didn't feel like fixing some vacuum-related issue correctly.

--DD