[Cliff R]

PS: one more note on points. Two things MUST happen if you are going to use your OEM distrributor. It needs to come apart for cleaning and lubrication. 50 year old factory grease isn't going to cut it.

The rubber advance pin sleeve is ALWAYS gone, so the curve will have more timing in it that what it was originally designed for.

More times than not the VA will be defective as well or the rubber in it so hard and cracked it's doomed right to start with.

Depending on the year of your factory points distributor the advance curve and how much timing it adds will need "adjusted" a bit. Robert (Sun Tuned) offers that service and is damn good at it. I'm retired from all that at this point so would rather not take in any more work as it interferes with throwing sticks for my dogs and taking my grand kids fishing.

You also need to make sure that the upper bushing in your points distirbutor has ZERO side-play. Most are fine. HEI's on the other hand for some reason wear the lower bushing and shaft pretty hard. Some also have the pins worn down and the holes in the weights all "egged out". I'd say the failure rate is at least 30 percent if not a tad higher. You'll also find a LOT of those POS weight/spring kits have been installed, so always pull the cap (or get pics is bought on-lne) and see what's in there before you purchase a used one on-line or at a swap meet.. Remarkably the factory center cams and weights are nearly ideal for performance work in most HEI's. They just need a positive stop welded in (the advance pin hits nothing and they rely on the "flats" on the center cam to stop advance when the flats on the weights reach them). All in all a good design for production use but very poor for high performance and high RPM's and you absolutely can NOT put light springs on the strock parts or plan on it adding 20 or so degrees at high RPM's when the weights overcome the built in stop.

In closing I have had a number of aftermarket HEI's sent here and I took a look at them, gently put them back together and returned them to the owners. Absolute pure pieces of bovine excrement......IMHO....

Attached is a pic of the distibutor gear from one of them, bought at Summit Racing by a local guy. The POS Chinese gear was worn to a knife edge in less than 200 miles!.....