Old cars suck.

In reply to ShawnG :

I think part of the reason the contact points on the backing plates get worn/slotted is because people are afraid to use grease anywhere inside the brake drum. Like "OMG Grease near brake pads! Hell no!" ahahaha   Drum brake set up is becoming a lost skill. Imagine years from now when hardly anyone alive will know how, it'll be like a teenager now trying to figure out how to remove valves from an old flathead Ford block."call grandpa"

mad_machine (Forum Supporter) said:

Points are some of the easiest things to upgrade. Who would want to run them?

I've never been left at the side of the road by a set of points.

OTOH, I've had three bad Pertronix modules.

Now, if I can, I use the factory points to fire a Ford TFI module. The dwell is way better, spark is way more consistent and if it fails for some reason, you just swap a couple wires and drive home on the original points ignition.

NOT A TA said:

In reply to ShawnG :

I think part of the reason the contact points on the backing plates get worn/slotted is because people are afraid to use grease anywhere inside the brake drum. Like "OMG Grease near brake pads! Hell no!" ahahaha   Drum brake set up is becoming a lost skill. Imagine years from now when hardly anyone alive will know how, it'll be like a teenager now trying to figure out how to remove valves from an old flathead Ford block."call grandpa"

I'm sure you're correct, the only time I've found any grease on those pads is on cars I've serviced before..

I imagine you've read Herb Adams book from VSE on preparing the 2nd Gen 'birds for competition. Rather than swapping to disc brakes, he just ventilated the drums and backing plates to solve the heating problem.

I swapped a 1981 WS6 disc rear into my autocross T/A and found that it made no difference over the drum brake rear.

I'm not saying old cars are better or anything like that. They're just not as bad as everyone seems to think.

Most of the "bad" old cars just have 40 years of neglect magnifying any issues they may have.

They still suck especially when I wasn't around to build it.

Jacked the front up and bled the power steering system. Guess what? A huge "burp" was let out right around the hard spot I had before. Now I've got it down to where it could be driven but it makes a E36 M3ton of noise making right turns as the pump still cavatates. Oh well better than before. Now I find a crappy weeping pan or timing cover gasket. Or the water only I found in the cooling system. Not to mention the cheapass brass fittings everywhere connected to rubber hose that doesn't belong in certain areas or braided hose held on with hose clamps...

But for now it may do some killer burnouts...