Noticed a comment regarding points bounce up the screen a bit, so thought I'd chime in.
The very first 'hotrod' thing I ever did was to put a Mallory conversion kit in the diz on the family '53 Merc. Toward the top of first gear, the engine would violently 'break up'. I guessed it might be ignition and talked to the guys at the local 'high performance' shop, who suggested the dual-point conversion. (My Dad wasn't a 'car' guy, although he didn't object to my getting my fingers greasy.) The instructions that came with the kit explained how to put the parts inside the diz and mount the giant brass-canned condenser on the outside. But my buddy and I were stumped for a half-an-hour when the engine wouldn't restart.
Finally I remembered having read about setting the gap on points and that four thicknesses of map paper (we all had maps in the glove compartment) would establish a working gap. So we set the points with map paper and the engine came to life. And from that time on, the flathead Merc would wind to the moon with NO break-up.
I fell in love with ignition systems to such an extent that, when I finally bought a NEW car, it was a '64 Ford Custom---with a 427-T engine. It said so on the valve covers. I'd ordered the optional transistorized ignition on the engine, complete with the Bakelite housing on the inner fender housing and the 'T' appended to the 427 sticker on the valve covers.
The distributor used only one set of points. (Buy them special, by part number, at the dealer.) I was told they alternatively fit in a six cylinder diz. But even with the transistor package, there was a bit of 'break-up' above 6000, and I was shifting at 6500, or trying to. I finally wedged a piece of scuba-diver's wet-suit material between the arm on the points and the inner side of the diz body. (I was a scuba instructor and had lots of scraps of foam neoprene laying around.) This stabilized the points and kept them from bouncing, even at high RPM.
On the last FE engine I built, I went to a trigger wheel, And this next time, I'll use a COP set-up and run the entire ignition through the ECM that runs both the injection and the ignition and, a few other things as well, so there'll just be a blank spot where the distributor was meant to go. But if I were to have anything to do with points, I'd use something like a chunk of foam neoprene wedged in place to stabilize the point arm.
KS
