Setting distributor centrifugal spring preload

[ill_will]

Having put a timing light on my '72 1750 I could see that the distributor was not advancing as much as it should do. Or not returning to where it should at idle, I guess.

I took it to pieces and found that one of the tabs to which the springs attach (for the centrifugal advance weights) had been bent back, probably due to someone attaching the condensor with a screw that was too long and the screw fouling the inner workings of the distributor.

The plate which has these tabs attached to it is slotted so that the position of the spring attachment tabs can be moved relative to the weights. Initial advance seems to occur purely by stretching the springs, then after a small amount of advance the weights begin to bear on the spring sideways (if this makes sense.) This would appear to agree with the advance curves I've seen which have a steep initial slope, followed by a flatter secondary gradient.

My question is: does anyone know how the slotted plate with the tabs should be set?

Many thanks in advance,

will

[ill_will]

Distributor is fixed! advancing perfectly from idle to 5000 rpm. One problem down, two to go... For the record, I straightened out the bracket that the springs attach to using an engineering vice, so that the mounting points were diametrically opposite the centre hole. Then the spring preload was set so that it was the lightest preload where there was no play in the 'advance rotor' (which the cap goes onto - NB not to be confused with no play in the centrifugal weights, as with this (working) set-up there is still some of that.)

1) BRAKES: they are the two-pot front calipers with a single bleed valve on the brake pipe side. MOT man said they were unbalanced, which was probably caused by having to strip down the NSF caliper to repair a binding problem. Despite numerous goes at bleeding, that caliper still isn't pulling its weight, i.e. OSF and NSR lock first. Could there be air trapped in the outer pot? The 4-pots i've got on my other car have two bleed nipples, one for each side... Even with the brakes slightly unbalanced, they stop incredibly well (better than my integrale! probably due to the lightweight car.)

2) I gave the car an Italian tune up today and at full throttle it pulls beautifully, no hesitation, lovely noise, no smoke - perfect. However, I'm still getting misses at constant rpm cruise at lower rpm, i.e. 1500-3500. As you can imagine, this is very annoying in town/traffic. I'll try the suggestions above some time over the weekend and keep posting on progress...

will