Replacing your VWs points

Posted by Jon June 6, 2012

Your air-cooled VWs contact breaker points work fine when they’re set correctly and it’s not hard to do, but they’ll cause all manner of grief if they’re not!

Checking and adjusting the points in your air-cooled Camper or Bus engine is a tedious job that people generally put off until their car won’t start, then get annoyed about because they could easily have avoided that inconvenience. So save all that hassle and go check your points today. New ones cost between £5 and £10, so there’s no excuse not to buy a couple of sets when you’re at the next VW show and keep a spare set in your on the road tool kit. While you’re about it, buy a new rotor arm and snag a couple of condensers too as these little mystery components have a habit of failing when you least expect it and can’t be fixed, only replaced.

While you’re setting the points, it’s worth checking the condition of the rest of your ignition system, including the distributor cap, the rotor arm and the leads. None of this is complicated stuff, but it can make the difference between a fun day out and a day spent on the side of the road wishing you’d done this basic procedure before you left.

Feel free to download this article as a .pdf file so you can print it out and use it in your garage. However we do recommend reading the entire article first, so you can familiarise yourself with the procedure and know what your getting in to.
(To save the file to your computer right click the link below and select ‘Save file as’ or ‘Save linked file as’. If you click the link normally it will open in your browser.)