Gapping the Points on Your Car Engine

In order to get the gap set on those points just right. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this ratchet which allows me to get on the lower pulley of the engine. And when I turn this by hand, I'm gonna be able to turn the whole engine over at the same time, Brent is gonna be eyeball on those points looking for the maximum opening that he can get on those, which is gonna tell him that we're at the high spot on that cam. Ok? Because of the, there's centrifugal weights in the distributor shaft and you can't, we can't get a camera in there to see this. Um, I'll, I'll hold the points in the same orientation that they are right below this, this uh those weights. And as George turns this thing over the high point of the cam is gonna push on the wiper and, and open those points up. So I'm watching the C lobes open up and right a little bit more George, OK. Right there, right there is, is as wide open as it gets. So underneath there that cam lobe is just opening those contact points up. So now I know that the, the lobe is on a high point, it's as wide as those things can go. So I'm gonna take my screwdriver and a F and a Feeler gauge and I'm gonna set that gap to 16,000, which is what I got out of the manual. So as, as open as they can go, it doesn't mean they're right yet. That's the next set up we have to do. Ok. So now I've used the feeler gauge and the screwdriver here to set the point gap to 16,000, which is what I've got out of the book. Um Now these points are gapped wide enough to make this engine run. So at this point, we can put the rotor back in place, put the cap back on start the engine, um, hook a 12 m up to it and fine tune those points and those points that you had and we wanna make sure we hold on to the old ones. Keep the, keep the old points. I al I always put them in a baggie in the glove box just in case you burn a set of points up. That's a good tip.