Learned to set my points with a dollar bill and a test light, and the idle smoothed right out

Reese Thompson · 2026-10-17T16:55:05.136555+00:00

My 289 in the Falcon had been running rough for about three weeks and I kept chasing the carb, screwing with the mixture screws and getting nowhere. A guy at the Saturday cruise in Livermore told me to stop touching the carb and check the dwell instead, so I dug out my old dwell meter that had been sitting in a coffee can in the shed. Thing is, I never had feeler gauges that fit right, the ones I had were either too thin or jammed the gap too wide. He said just use a dollar bill folded once, drag it between the point contacts while you turn the adjusting screw until it pulls with a little drag, then snug the screw down and check with the meter. Did that, set it to 30 degrees dwell, and the motor fired up and idled like it never had. The dollar bill trick worked better than any gauge I owned because the paper is thin enough to slide but thick enough that you feel the contact. Anyone else use paper instead of a gauge, or am I the last guy to hear about this?

Babble Community

Loading…

Learned to set my points with a dollar bill and a test light, and the idle smoothed right out | Classic Cars - Babble Community