so my litle silver 1972 1.7 L has been running, not running, running...

i broke a piece in my stock dist. the ball bearing/advance hold down armature.

went to a shop, figuring they had parts, they replaced my dist.

was not the right dist, shorter dist cap, diff rotor..

so i yarded it out, stole the advance hold down and points, swapped them over and realized I didnt mark my position.

then i noticed the dist had an offset connection, only one way to go in!

OK, put the new one in, rotate the dist cam, popped into place.

reset the points, did a visual dist position and cranked over, no start.

odd.

checked plug 1,4,3,2 firing order, position of number one on dist and to plug...

hmmm... this dist worked fine until it broke, now its fixed...

cant buy a new/used one... ive checked around... no love...

sigh...

PM sent .... read it.

Even if the advance plate is not working at all, the car should still fire. (if its ignition). Check the ground lead from the points to the distributor body. My guess is you have something else wrong.

The shorter cap one is probably the Type 3 distributor ...

that distributor that was put in by the shop was a type 3...

im going backwards to the original...



think i found the problem... in the image i have one of the fi contacts broken...

fixing that now..

Don't you just hate those old wires? I was putting new points in my distributer the other day and was amazed that I haven't broken any of the existing wires in the engine bay yet just by brushing up against them. One day I will get around to replacing them all. (Probably not before I break one of them first by accident though).

went this morning to norvac electronics in eugene oregon... great place... the broken wire in the fi/distributor plug needed a new female connector, a very narrow one..

why not just replace 3...

of course the old ones have a locking tab that holds them in place within the plastic plug, that takes half an hour to yard those out, but i see why, pushing that plug into the receptacle onside the distributor would be horrible if they backed out... they have to lock.

well, norvac had that same exact connector, size, everything... no locking tab..

so i improvised. i mounted all three new tabs on fresh wire, put them in the plug and epoxied the butt end of the wires down. then put connectors on the pigs, reconnected...

works great, but...

dogging out... no get up... I think my tps is not right, is this common? i talk to vw guys around town and they dont touch any of that stuff... christ, the dude i had check out the ghetto rebuild on the distributor didnt know the timing specs... i printed those out and they are in a folder in my car now...

sure does purr when timed... if only it had more power... like my accelerator just doesnt have enough motion... to the floor all the time in 3rd and 4th.. well, not all the time but enough to wonder where the power is...