What could (and did) go wrong?

[fcgadget]

It’s been 40+ years since I worked on a VW. Thought it was like falling off a bike…you never forget

But this inherited ‘55/’57 bug bet me up. It was running, but hadn’t been driven for a year and no work for awhile before that. So I did a tune up. Have Haynes and Muir’s guides and looked them over before starting.

So I timed and set points and set valves.

And proceeded to screw things up royally.

The dizzy was way off, the coil gave up the ghost part way through and the rotor ‘broke’.

The dizzy drive gear was about 160 degrees off, meaning I couldn’t just point the rotor at the notch. To aggravate things I thought the #1 cylinder was the closest to me on the passenger side…while I sat looking at the engine from behind. OOPS!

Finally figured those out but couldn’t get the thing to run. Early in the ‘work’ it had fired, so what could it be?

Replaced the coil, checked connections to the dizzy and tried again….and failed.

The rotor LOOKED OK…but I hadn’t really paid much attention to those things in the past. Turns out that the connector between the center point and the edge contact was gone. I had assumed that there was an internal through the plastic connection.

Now it runs!

Of course all that smoke had to come from somewhere..the valve covers are leaking. Next trick is to replace the gaskets, and then I’m done!

For awhile….