OK, point made. I read into his post something that was not there.

However I personally have not had an engine that was running strong suddlenly start backfiring and running poorly because of points closing. My experiece is that the car slowly starts running poorer until it really runs bad.

Still, my main point is that it sounds like the car ran well up to teh point he filled up, and that is when it started running poorly...which makes it appear it is more likely fuel related. I certainly would not hurt to check teh dwell or gap and timing, but I'd look at teh fuel system first