Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

Hello,
Sorry for the elementary question, but I hear people say “you need to carry a set of points with you”. What exactly are we talking about here? Understand the points are under the distributor cap, right? Are we talking about carrying around a spare cap? Asking as I want to have a small kit of essential emergency spare parts that I keep in the car glove box.
These parts will be for a 7-40 Roadster.
Thank you!
Rich

Points and condensers are the two most likely ignition items that will fail without much notice. Condensers either short or open and if the condenser opens points can burn. If it shorts you will be sitting on the side of the road. The other fail with points is the flat spring that closes them can break. Points, particularly for your car, are not likely to be found at a local O'Reillys if they should fail while on a trip and you are in the middle of nowhere. Condensers too, but at least with a condenser you can buy almost anything the parts store might have and figure a way to temporarily mount it outside the distributor if it won't fit inside. As long as the mounting is grounded it works just as well connected to the outside terminal and wire going to the coil. That is why points and condensers are often the two most important spares you can have. Coils fail, caps can crack, and on some cars, particularly those with resistor type rotors the resistors open and the rotor gives up.

It never hurts to have a small kit of all ignition spare parts to carry even just around town if it is something that is often only found at one of our vendors.

As Howard indicated, these are important things to carry, especially on early prewar cars where they can’t be purchased locally. However, you also need the tools and knowledge to be able to install and adjust them as the parts by themselves will do little good if you’re out somewhere by yourself and have no clue what to do.

Thanks much guys. Does anyone know of a “how to video”:or some other knowledge that explains more about points and condensers and how to replace them?

They are pretty simple parts, just a few screws and nuts to remove and reassemble the two parts. Always take a few pictures from different angles of the existing assembly before you start so you have that for reference. Read your car's manual and go over it with someone who has done it, or like they do these days, type it into Google and watch the video on YouTube.
Matchbook covers are great emergency gauges to set point gap!
Bob J.

In your kit make sure that you have the open end box ignition wrench, screw driver, feeler gauge or match book.

This will allow you to do a replacement and if using the match book you'll be close untill you get back.

Heres a couple of QUICK search for wrench/feeler gauges for less that 25.oo so you dont have to raid your garage tool box.

SPEEDWOX Mini Combination Wrench Set SAE Ignition Wrenches 10 Pcs Mini Wrench Set Standard 5/32-7/16" Open and Box End Small Wrench Set with Portable Canvas Bag $13.00
AMAZON....

GEARWRENCH 32 straight Blade Deluxe SAE/Metric Feeler Gauge - 161D $10.00


And,,,,,
This got me thinking that I need to also include this for my 37.. Now to find a vintage suitcase to store this and the oil and parts in ...

Happy springtime !

Rich,
All of the response's are right on about carrying points and condenser in the glove box.

Now the bad news,
Your car has a NorthEast distributor and points are not hard to find, they don't exist!

Now the good news.
There is a conversion kit available that will convert those distributors to a set of modern points that are readly available

These kits are available from the major Packard parts sources.

To see if you need the kit pull the dist. cap off and see if it has one set of points or two, if two it has not been converted and could use to conversion.

If the dist. points look like this pic. it has been converted, the points are NAPA CS851 and the condenser is NAPA AL869.

John

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