Rant: I called points upgrades a waste of cash for years, then I walked through the AACA museum in Hershey | Classic Car Maintenance

Olivia Smith · 2026-10-30T01:55:05.527784+00:00

I used to think guys who swapped out their old points for electronic ignition were ruining these cars, and I would say it right to their faces at the local cruise nights. That changed on a Saturday trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where I spent about 3 hours walking the rows at the AACA Museum looking at cars from the 20s up through the 70s. What got me was a little display about how these cars were driven every day back when they were new, and how the owners were always fiddling with gap and dwell just to keep them running. I stood there thinking about my own 64 Galaxie and how I have messed with that distributor at least 6 times in the past year, usually in a parking lot with a flashlight in my teeth. Nobody was doing that for fun back in the day, they did it because they had to. So now I am eating my words and have a Pertronix kit sitting on the bench waiting to go in, and I feel a little dumb about how hard I argued against it. For you guys running original points, do you set dwell with a meter or just eyeball the gap and call it close enough?

🐿️Pinecone Attack

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Rant: I called points upgrades a waste of cash for years, then I walked through the AACA museum in Hershey | Classic Car Maintenance - Pinecone Attack