[T3] Adjusting point contact alignment ?

[Jim Adney]

On 17 Mar 2019 at 19:21, William Jahn wrote:

> Even though the Bosch points I got IMHO are crap . It´s been so long I forgot how to align the contacts. I think I used to do it before I installed them yet I can´t remember what I did in 97 . It seems adjusting the alignment with them installed would place a bit of force on the dist plate or the adjustment screw .
> 
>  What is the best and safest way? Bentley states after , I simply can´t recall .

I've never adjusted points to make them more parallel than they come out of 
the package, and I don't see anything in the Bentley suggesting that we 
should do so. My impression is that the only adjustment they are talking 
about is the gap/dwell. The contacts are slightly domed, making contact 
reliable in spite of imperfect alignment. There's no advantage to having that 
point of contact be perfectly centered. The electrons don't care.

I agree that the screwdriver notch always seems to be in the wrong place to 
make a good dwell adjustment.

OTOH, it's probably important that the base of the contact  frame be flat. We 
don't want that to rock as the points move.

If the rubbing block doesn't touch down evenly, that will wear and be 
annoying until it wears into full engagement. Yeah, that would be annoying, 
but, OTOH, all rubbing blocks wear a bit faster at first, until they get a bit of a 
flat spot that wears slowly. That's one more reason why I like the old Delta 
CDI systems that I have, since my points now last almost forever. There's no 
pitting, no arcing, and the only thing that ever fails is that the wire eventually 
flexes and breaks inside the insulation, but that takes many 10s of 
thousands of miles.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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