Contact point failure from left field

[Darrell]

My new (Wombat) points failed me in an unusual way. The bike suddenly died while I was in the middle of crossing a four-lane highway...I had to get off and push like crazy through traffic before the light changed.

But at least I didn't get run over before I got it to the other side. Later, during an ignition check I saw that the points weren't opening. So I adjusted them and as soon as I pulled out the feeler gauge the gap disappeared again.

To cut to the chase, the problem is that the point/contact in the point arm had come loose and was floating up and down in its mount by about .025".

This incident occurred just before leaving for Hodaka Days, and fortunately I hadn't yet thrown out the old condenser-burnt points, so I was able to file them up to a useable condition and the bike has run fine since.

I'm throwing this out there in case anybody else might have this problem and be stumped as to why their bike isn't running right, or not at all. I also wonder how rare and unusual it is for points to fail this way. Closed points typically meant extreme rubbing block wear and failure where I come from.