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I appreciate the guidance very much. The distributor is tight and not moving around. There does not appear to be an issue with the bushing although I keep the distributor as a suspect until I find otherwise. I disconnected the OD wire and the car ran equally poor so for now I assume that is not the problem. I went ahead and ordered a new coil and will install it to see if that makes a difference. I pulled the old coil last night and inspected the ignition wire, which looks OK.

I'll report back if the coil fixes the problem, or doesn't...

If the points are burning out, it would seem the only possible reason would be the drawing of current. They heat up and get fried. Possible reasons could be:

1) a frayed or bare wire going from the points to the coil
2) bad condenser (mentioned above) or a voltage leak to ground between the points and the condenser
3) Ignition switch not turning off completely which would cause the points to continue to have power to them leading to burned points & the a dead battery
4) Bad coil (mentioned above)
5) Points set to close with them making contact ost of the time


I would recommend checking the wiring going to the coil and examining everything involved in the non-energized (between the points 7 the coil) side of the circuit. maybe replacing any bad looking wire.

Another thought is with the car running, could your generator/regulator be supplying too much voltage? This might cause the capacitor to fail prematurely.

Good luck.

Wish I had all this good advice a few years ago when my 1950 356 had similar baffling poor running.
New carb, electric fuel pump, points, plugs, cap, rotor, coil, drained fuel tank. No improvement.
Final discovery: mechanic would never change the condenser when he did a tuneup!!! That fixed it.

My 327 also had similar problems, and it ended up that the distributor shaft was worn. Put a new distributor in and car ran great.

Thank you everyone for the good advice. We replaced all the ignition parts, and the car wouldn't run, so we slowly backtracked and reinstalled the original parts one item at a time. It turned out that the new condenser, which was included as part of the tune-up kit, was bad. Once we removed it and reinstalled the original, the car ran great. Oh well...

Good to be back on the road!

Thanks,

Steve

Steve, I believe this experience will show you the wisdom of always carrying a spare condenser, rotor, point file (or better yet, extra set of points) in the glove box.

Do you mind saying who sold you the tune-up kit?
That would let me know to be sure to ask that supplier to check the quality of the parts I buy from them before they ship.

Have you asked them to refund or replace the part?

If the vendor is a member of this forum, would they mind explaining how this happened, what their policy is, and what they are doing about it. It's pretty obvious is was not a happy customer experience.

No, I have not had lunch yet.

I am as guilty as the next person of swapping parts to find the problem. Something to keep in mmind tho... The old Motor manuals have directions on how to test all of the ignition components with a multi-meter. ...including checking grounds everywhere.

I once had a stripped threaded hold-down screw on the points mounting plate. It seemed to hold find everytime I tightened it. That was a pistol to figure out!

It's great that you found the issue!

Never used a condenser tester or even know how they work, but my high school auto shop teacher used this method. He made a simple 110 volt continuity tester with a light bulb as the resistance and inserted the condenser in the circuit for a second, and then set it aside. Wait 30 minutes and touch the lead to the shell - if you got an arc the condenser was good. This soon lead to charging them up and then tossing them to some unsuspecting person who caught it in their hand and got the (literal) shock.

Tuneup kit was from Max Merritt - condenser appeared new. They sent a replacement after we determined it was the problem, but for now I am running on the original one.

Does this model have the step down resister in line. If so, and is not there or bad, the high voltage/current will cause the points to burn .