Fast Marina Magazine

Hi, how often do people have to adjust their points gap. I had to do mine again today. It had become sluggish at low rpm and then suddenly became hard to start. Points gap had closed up due to the plastic lever wearing away.

I suppose there is a standard mileage specified in the manual for checking the points, but I check them and all the ignition parts fairly regularly. Its worth just putting a small smear of grease on the cam so that the plastic heel of the points doesn't wear down as quickly. I also always carry a spare set of points, rotor arm, condensor in the boot (and feeler gauges and the apropriate screwdriver) just in case. Its also a good idea to lubricate the pivot point of the points with a tiny drop of 3 in 1 oil which can stop them sticking. Hope this helps.

Thanks, I changed them about 1000 miles ago and was suprised they'd worn away so quickly. I'll try the oil out.

The Lucas 45D distributor should have a little felt pad under the rotor arm, to which you should add a few small drops of oil, this lubricates the points arm on the rotating cam.

Hi,

I'm old enough to remember the change over from the old tufnal???? contact breakers to the 'new' plastic ones. we found that within 500 miles there was noticable wear down of the plastic 'heal'. We found that it also hardened and the wear reduced.

We got into the habit of fitting new contact breakers, then using a honing stone (small oil stone or similar) to clean up the spike on the contact faces every few hundred miles until it stopped closing up.

All labour intensive but relatively easy to sort out at the side of the road

As soon as a proper electronic ignition appeared (contact breaker removed) we fitted it (first one lasted 3 days, second one lasted 17 years, third one still usable as a spare (159,000 miles total to date).

Brian