Daze of My Youth, Points and Rotor Buttons

The old cars, trucks, and motorcycles were like that, simple machines that a kid with a little bit of knowledge could patch them back together using little more than bailing wire and duct-tape.

Return to the daze of my youth.

I miss points — especially single points. Not the kind of points that poke holes in you, but ignition points that were once found on automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles.

It used to be that all gasoline engines had points in the ignition system. Some engines had one set of points — single point — and others had 2 sets — dual points. Properly adjusted dual points improved the ignition system and thus the high speed performance of the engine, but were harder to adjust, and more expensive.

Back in the late ’70s I was riding a Harley-Davidson in the middle of the night on a 2 lane road when the engine started missing (misfiring) and then quit, leaving me stranded on the side of the road talking to myself, “Billy, you dumbass, you knew it was past time to replace those points, now my buzz is gone?”

Plus a few choice words I probably shouldn’t write here.

I looked around and not too far away there was an abandoned filling station with several junked cars around it. I already knew that the points in Harleys were the same as 6 cylinder Chevys to I looked to find there were no 6 cylinder Chevys to be found. “What now?” I grumbled to myself.

So I removed a set of points from an old Ford Falcon and attempted to fit them into my Hog. Didn’t work.

After sitting on the ground, staring at both sets of points, and pondering my situation, I came up with a plan. I pried the arms from both sets of points using my Buck Knife and swapped them. Problem was, the Ford’s arm was a bit too long to make contact. “Hmmm, “I mumbled.

I then used a pair of pliers and a small box wrench to hold and put 2 bends in the arm so that the arm almost matched up to the other side of the points. I put the “modified” Ford arm on the Harley base and bradded the top back down by hitting it with my Buck knife. Then I adjusted the gap using a matchbook and started the bike.

How did it run? Horribly, but it ran the 20 miles I needed to make it home. The next morning I got in my pick-up and rode to the auto-parts store where I bought 2 pairs of BlueStreak points for a 6 cylinder Chevrolet. One to replace the points in my bike and one to carry in the saddlebag.

*** Late one night many years ago, a friend and I were riding around smoking doobies and drinking beer when the engine died on his Ford Maverick.

Now I’m not saying you should ride around smoking doobies and drinking beer, that’s what we did for entertainment back in the daze of my youth — it was what it was.

On the side of a two lane country road in the middle of the night, John coasted to a stop on the side of the road with barely enough room to keep from running off in the ditch. “Oh man,” John moaned, “what’s wrong now?”

“Did you replace that old rotor button like we told you do do?” I asked, knowing that if a state trooper were to find us on the side of the road drunk, stoned, and in possession, we would both be in hot water.

“Naw man,” John said taking a draw off the doobie I had just handed him. “I forgot all about it.”

“Raise the hood,” I said as I reached for the doobie to take my turn. “Might as well start there first.”

“Right,” John laughed as he popped the distributor cap exposing the rotor button. “Reckon that’s the problem?”

Reaching to pull the rotor button from the top of the distributor shaft I looked at it and replied, “Ain’t nothin’ left of that one, got another?”

“Naw,” John laughed before taking another hit, “got any ideas?”

“Open the trunk,” I said taking the last toke from the roach then eating it, “let’s see what you’ve got.”

After several minutes of looking through the junk in John’s trunk I found a roll of electrical tape, a pair of pliers, and a paper clip. “Think you can fix it?” John questioned me as he downed the last of his beer before tossing the can in the ditch.

“Can’t make it no worse,” I replied as I too pitched my empty beer can in the ditch.

I wrapped the top of the distributor shaft with electrical tape, bent the paper clip into the shape I thought it needed to be, then looked at John, and said, “Give it a try.”

The old Ford still wouldn’t run but it did fire encouraging me to try again, and after numerous tries I finally got the car to run… poorly. Very poorly. “Let’s ride,” I said to John, and off we went straight to a safe place to hide the car and walk the last mile or so home.

***

The old cars, trucks, and motorcycles were like that, simple machines that a kid with a little bit of knowledge could patch them back together using little more than bailing wire and duct-tape. Today’s machines are very different and often over the heads of even the best amateur mechanics. And a lot of us old timers miss those simple old machines. I know I do.

Ride on over to What Would You Do?