My 1975 2.0 was not idling when warm so I was going throught the list to fix it. I just got a dwell meter so I hooked it up and it read the dwell was 36. I changed the points which turned out to be really bad and adjusted the dwell to 47 (may have hit 47 by luck because I was just moving around the points and retightening the screw). The car ran great and no problems with the idle when the car was warm. I didn't have a timing light so I didn't adjust the timing. The next day I went for a ride and the car acted really gutless. I could floor it in 5th and not get it to go over 70. I drove to a friends house to borrow his timing light and on the way home the car started backfiring and the tach was all over the place. When I finally got home, I couldn't get my meter to read the dwell angle. I checked the distributor cap inside center and it was dirty/black (this is a new cap) and maybe worn down (not springy like the old one, just flush?). I adjusted the points and got it to run better but the idle would stay too high. Still no dwell on the meter. I read in this forum something about greasing the points which I didn't do. Did I ruin the cap? Are my points so far off it makes the dwell not read. Any thoughts that would help me fix this? I still need to figure out how to adjust points. I see the Haynes book page 63 shows rivet heads and a notch to reposition. I didn't use those and I didn't move the car so the moving contact rubbing block is on one of the peaks of the cam.
