I see there is not much activity on this thread. Have any members checked their advance to see if it met the original ignition curve? I have done some searching on Pelican to see if anyone has posted their ignition advance on stock engines prior to the Motronic cars, but only find modified cars with programmable ignitions.
Most of what I find is people saying either set it at idle, or for max advance at 6,000 rpm. I would think a bit of performance and efficiency is being lost by not making sure the spark is occurring at the right time throughout the rpm range. My original 0 231 169 008 distributor was replaced with a later 0 231 184 007 early on in my ownership due issues. The ignition advance was the same and 184 was in good shape, just a little more vacuum retard.
There can be a lot of internal issues with these old units, and many need more than just oil on the felt. Most fiber, phenolic pieces are worn out and need repair. Rust and corrosion limit movement.
I can understand why most do not want to do the some of the repairs themselves, there are quite a few difficult to source pieces. They do seem to get easier to work on in later models. My 169 was a bit of a pain, the 184 was better, and my '86 930 602 023 00 was fairly easy.
