Helmet Distributor Issues

T

TNTim

Junior Member
So I pulled my “37” distributor off the car. It’s a helmet, two bolt coil. Coil was recently redone by Skip. Car seemed to be running ok outside of not wanting to start when it got hot. I replaced the condenser. While i had it out, I checked the point gaps and it was way off. Driver side was over .020 and passenger was around .018. I put it on a Heyer/Ford machine. The Dwell % was very low too. So I decided to adjust the points to where I got 55% on driver side and total of 81% for both. Checked my timing on it and also on an KR Wilson box. Installed back on the car and now it runs rough. Pops when you give it a little gas.

My question is why would it run better at such a big point gap and low dwell?
 
If you block off the passenger side points the driver side should be set at 22 1/2 degrees dwell. Then remove the block and set the passenger side to obtain 36 degrees total.
 
Also, take the vacuum brake piston out of the bore so it is not riding on the plate that changes the timing when setting it up on a machine that spins the shaft.
I would calculate what % 22 1/2 is of 360 and 36 is of 360 (or maybe 720)
 
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Dwell (duration of points closed) happens eight times for each 360 degree revolution of the distributor. So dwell as a percentage is the percent of 1/8 of a revolution, of 45 degrees. 22-1/2 degrees dwell is 50%. 36 degree dwell is 80%.(the points are closed 80 % of the time, open 20% of the time)
 
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