I was out to tune-up our “new” 72 142 E yesterday and ran into some distributor problems. I am hoping some of you here will chime in with some advice.
1st- I gapped the points to .015 in. then attempted to start the car to check the timing. The car would not start. After many tries and swapping out coils I decided to try an old set of points and condenser from the bottom of my tool box. That got the car running.

With the points gaped at ~.015 (my book says >.014) my dwell is about 47. My book says dwell should be 59-65.
Should I just adjust the points to get the proper dwell?
Is Dwell more important that point gap?

Then while trying to set the timing something interesting happened. With the vacuum line disconnected and plugged the engine would not hold a setting of 12 deg. As I rotated the Dist. (motor running, using timing light) at about 10 deg the engine would slowly rev up and advance the timing to about 20 deg. On its own. In other words I couldn’t set the timing at 12 deg. because it would advance uncontrollably once I got to 10deg. Why is this happing? Could it be linked to the dwell?

Lastly (I promise) the distributor retards the timing when I plug the vacuum line back in. Is this one of the vacuum retard dist. I vaguely remember reading about on the board and everyone suggests disconnecting the vacuum line and letting the advance weights to the work (I think). What, if anything, can I do to this set up now to get the most out of it???
I intend on upgrading to electronic ignition when I have the money but this is what I have for now.
Thanks for all the help!!!
Wayne