Hey all - For a few months now, I've had to regularly pull the injector triggers out and clean them up. About a week after I clean them, off the line performance starts to suffer. The problem will progress for the next few weeks until the car literally becomes undriveable; it can't get itself going more than a mile an hour, it just stumbles.

I test the points with the distributor on, and one side of the triggers isn't making contact. Once I pull and clean and sand the contacts on them, everything's ok. They're not visibility filthy, but apparently something's happening. Do I need to replace them? Or the whole distributor? Or just rebuild the distributor? Any tips on that would be handy.

Thanks!!

-Ben

If you need them, I have a stock of FI distributors. Trigger points - $10 plus USPriority mail-$4.80 -- entire distributor $20 + $10 postage.

The more you sand them the less they will make contact.
The plastic block that runs on the cam and pushes them open wears and once it is worn it doesn't push far enough.
Sanding just makes it worse.
DON'T rebuild the distributor, get a new (different)set of trigger points!
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Ben;

I believe in filing the contacts, thinking you were doing a good thing in cleaning them, you did a bad thing in removing the noncorrosive surface plating, allowing rapid deterioration of the underlying metal...you should just probably replace them at this point, and the very MOST agressive you should do to the replacement contacts is clean them with PAPER (no more abrasive than that(!), then treat them with Deoxit D5 contact cleaner/treatment*.

RJ; TNX for reference as always!

Cheers

* I'm working on a "Product Reviews" page for my site, until that is up (soon), just link to manufacturers site: http://store.caig.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.188/.f IMO, this stuff is very, very good and will feature prominently as a two thumbs up product on the page.

Yeah, you ought not to sand or file them. At least that's what I was told.

Check the function of the points with a multimeter on a bench.
Read the Ohms between the center and outboard spades when you manually open the points. This will tell you if the points are breaking properly.
If all is well, lube the pivots with a little 3-in-1 and leave them alone.

Be sure you are looking at the right parts. Until I did a bench test, I completely misunderstood how the lower points worked and had been cleaning the wrong part! BTW - they are not adjustable

Next check the lobes on the dizzy cam for smoothness. These push the points open so if the points are fine in the benchtest, the problem may be here. You could have the lower points in incorrectly and this might prevent

If you have to keep cleaning them, my guess is that you have oil leaking down or being pushed into the bottom of the dizzy. It may need a rebuild or replacement.

Ron Kwas' Swedish Embassy site has a lot of info about basic dizzies that may be of help.

I just picked up two "condition unknown" FI dizzies - mainly to get a spare Crane setup and to get a couple spare pair of lower points. I paid about $60.00 but it was well worth that in parts.

Keep checking eBay for replacements if needed and if you come up short let me know and maybe I can help.

You may have blown your points with vigorous filing, but it seems to me that you would not be able to restore them with a little cleaning if that were the case. New trigger points will be expensive >$200.00, but you stand a good chance of getting a decent used set for much less. Do be sure you were actually filing down the point contacts and not the similar-looking, similar-sized rivet located on the bakelite pivot (I ask because I made that mistake).

Anyway, I thought I'd share a little more info on the bench test if you are going to try and narrow things down.

A bench test will tell you if the points are opening correctly when installed in the distributor.

You want to remove the whole dizzy and get a multimeter out. You should measure the resistance between the center and outside pin on the FI harness connector (the three-pin plug on the lower trigger points).

You should read a low level of resistance (not infinite resistance). Still reading the ohms between the two pins, use your third arm to slowly turn the dizzy rotor. When you trigger the lower points, your meter should register the break in circuit continuity as one of the trigger points opens (Ohms should drop to 0). It will return to "normal" as you continue to spin the rotor. Take note the OHMs reading.

Now you want to take a resistance reading between the center pin and the other outboard pin in the connector. Repeat the process and note the resistance value. Also note that the points should "break" with the rotor in the opposite direction. Did that work okay?

If you get no change in the OHMs reading when you spin the rotor, your points are not opening and *that* is (at least part of) your problem. This means they are not being opened by the dizzy cam lobe so two or more of your injectors are not firing.

Now, pull the trigger points and set them on your bench. Repeat the OHM readings on the pins, but this time use your extra hand to *manually* open the points. Do this for both sides of the trigger points and note the values before opening the points (they should be the same as before since the resistance is in the wiring and is not adjustable to my knowledge).

What you want to confirm is that the trigger points are being opened by the distributor cam. The actual values are not as important as confirming that continuity is being broken by the cam lobe on the distributor.

If you got precisely the same readings from manually opening the points as you did when the dizzy opened the points, then they are functioning properly and the problem is not the points installation in the dizzy or the dizzy itself.

If you get a break in continuity when you manually open the points but not when they are installed, your problem is either:

1) the cam lobe is worn and not contacting the trigger points
2) the bakelite parts of the trigger points are worn or broken and are not contacting the cam lobe.

The later is more likely.

It is also possible that the trigger points are just a bit "off" and adjusting them a bit might restore function. This was not my experience, but it is worth checking...

Good luck.

A couple possibilities:

Possibly you've sanded the contacts so much that they become easily burned to the point no current can pass across them when they're closed.

Or, possibly there is a bad (corroded?) wire connection somewhere between the connector and the contacts. Like a loose rivet or something?

Is it always the same contact that goes bad?