1950 plymouth 218 replacement points with seperate silver strap?????

[Patrick McCabe]

I have a 1950 plymouth engine 218 flatty,stoped at napa to get points and opened the box and they send a seperate silver horseshoe strap in the box.

So 1st pic is the old one, on the left I removed from distrib.  which the silver strap is rivoted to the points set over the gold strap

 

One  on the right is what napa sends as the replace ment?It does not attach anywhere on top,Ive triple checked orileys sells the same.

What is its purpose,do i need it??

2nd pic is new on setting in distrib

 

Any Ideas

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Patrick McCabe
add pic

[Sniper]

Pics?

[Patrick McCabe]

sorry guys file with pics was to big pictures are ther now thx

[allbizz49]

The silver strap goes around the copper one then attaches here...

[Sniper]

The silver horseshoe, as you call it, is the return spring for the points.  Without it the points will not close.

[Patrick McCabe]

Where it goes around the copper on top,it is not rivitod to case,lays loose,floats

on the bottom they tie together you are right about that

[Sniper]

You know, I put a new set of points in my 51 and I'll be darned if I remember how it went together.  You can kind of trace it in this pic

 

[Merle Coggins]

The little tab at the end of the spring must hook into the points arm during installation. If not it will not offer any spring tension to help close the points. I made that mistake once and it took a while to figure out why the engine wouldn't run above about 1500 RPM. I eventually discovered my mistake and got it installed correctly. The copper strap offered just enough spring tension to close the points at idle, but at higher RPM they wouldn't close fast enough and would start to bounce, causing a serious lack of power as the timing was very erratic. 

[DJK]

Have you tried putting the silver strap under the copper one????

[slatgrille]

The silver piece does in fact slip around the copper strap and hooks onto the point arm at the pivot point. Many replacement points are like this....have put several onto jeeps I have rebuilt/restored.

 

Craig