Points. Some love em, some hate em. I hate them. I don't want to deal with them and their related parts. I know about them and how to properly set them. But I just don't want to deal with them, and historical accuracy of my car is not #1 on my list. So when I found that I could replace them with a solid state electronic ignition, I was sold.

However after about 3 weeks the A5 started to act up again. After running for about an hour it would loose power and then you would be dead in the water. Seemed like it was having a bad coil or condenser issue again. Replacing them oddly did not change anything other than now it would not start period. New wires, nothing. New plugs nothing. Is a very simple engine and it was kicking my ass. Fuel? Yes...it was getting that. Inspecting the firing found that the points for some reason were not "firing" all the time. The points would open and they would still arc across and not kick the coil to ground. Re-gapping the points to the proper setting didn't change squat. The points were getting the proper voltage, so why it was arcing across the points was odd. I called around, and found that getting points for my distributor was going to be pretty hard to do. I had some suggestions of using nail heads...but I did not want to half ass the repair.

Sometimes not looking for repair help in the speeder groups/lists is the best thing. There are few A car owners out there compared to the smaller M, MT, and Woodings series cars, and knowledge on the larger engines is limited to a few people...and they may have perfectly running engines so they may have limited information. Since I found that many of the parts on the A4 and A5 series cars were the same as used in the Ford 8N tractors I started to look in forums dedicated to those tractors, or old tractor engines. I found an article on replacing the 8N ignition with an electronic module that improved performance and eliminated the need for condensers and points. I was sold.