Oliver 1550 spark issue

I recently purchased a 1550 gasser and when I bought it is was a fussy starting unit. Even the owner said so. Anyway now I'm not able to get spark. If I touch the points with a screw driver I get spark. But no spark or fire att the plugs. I have the Holley distrbutor with vacuum advance and to be honest I don't know how to set the points on this unit. A neigbor said I should get a different distrbutor. Is there any validity to his statement? It seemed he has had some negative experience with the vacuum advance type.

All comments are welcome.

Thanks Dave
 
I don't know exactly what you have but I work on an 1800 that has an aluminum distributor housing. It pretty much grounds through the hold down
clamps and it sets out some when it is on the auger.

From time to time in the last few years I have had to take the clamps off and scrape the metal to make it ground again. I've taken the whole distributor
out to check but it mostly grounds through those clamps.

When it needs attention it acts pretty much as you have described. With that vacuum advance I have found there can be other points that may not
ground good especially if the vacuum advance isn't hooked up.

With the cap off hook a jumper between the base of the points and a good ground. Then crank it to see if you have spark. If you do you have a grounding
problem.

RT
 
If you hve a spark at the king lead when you manually open the points, you have a simple fault. Either the pointsa are not being opened (sufficiently) by the cam or the spark energy
is not reaching the plug leads. That could be a faulty rotor arm or distributor cap. Can't see it being anything other than that. Kettering systems (guessing it is still OE) are simple
and did not change in design over decades of use.
 
pull the advance arm off at the points . theres a threaded hole at 2 oclock screw a small piece of metal down to hold the advance parts rigid
 
Usually with a vacuum advance you disconnect and plug the vacuum line to set the timing and idle speed. Mine's been changed to a Mallory so I don't have that issue. My Ford 2000 has a vacuum advance. Probably Holley being Ford but I'm not sure. When I got it I found someone had put washers in the advance to lock it. Took them out and set it as best I could and it improved the running.
 

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