Dizzy,body to points plate earth wire

[daver clasper]

Hi

This has just fallen to bits due to deterioration and is off the car, though the car still starts?.

Wondered why and if I need to look at replacing, though the small screw that holds the wire to the plate has a very mullered head and is in tight.

Any advice, would be great please.

Cheers, Dave

[RobPearce]

Well, because the points plate is supposed to be earthed (through that wire) they obviously made no attempt to insulate it from the earthed body. It may well be that you've got a good contact in the rest position. Possibly might give trouble when the vacuum advance kicks in.

[Nick Jones]

There are a couple of springy things as well as the central collar where the two parts swivel so as Rob says there is plenty of opportunity for earthing.

However, experience on two separate vehicles (my Herald and a hill climb Mini) have shown that failure of this earth wire can lead to a bewildering set of bad running and mis-fire problems which are very hard to diagnose when the outer sleeve looks ok....... And the vac advance doesn't need to be in action for it to happen either - the Mini ran a 45DCOE and no vac-advance.

I've remade them using de-solder braid in the past as it is nice and flexible.

Nick

[daver clasper]

Thanks for the help, great.

While on the subject of the points plate. I have bought a NOS set of points that comes in 2 parts.

Will this fit my current points plate (modern 1 piece points currently fitted), as I think I read somewhere that the points plates are different for the new/old types of points please.

Cheers, Dave