Pertronix flamethrower.

[Manny]

Sorry for bringing up ancient equipment.
My 2056 has been giving me fits of anger with difficult starts, after checking everything else, I decided to go inside the distributor for a look and cleaning.
It is clean as new, I noticed only one advance spring.
One technician from Pertronix tells me only one spring is needed.
A second technician tells me I need their P/N D700700 spring kit, purchased that.
Problem: the spring(s) are secured in place with plastic retainers and there are no retainers in the spring kit or installed on the pegs inside the distributor. I don't dare have spinning unsecured springs in there.
Anybody has looked that deep inside one of these ancient Pertronix units to verify if I wound up with a one-off factory mistake. Out of warranty for years now.
Thanks.

[Jadewombat]

I'm not going to speak for everyone here, but I gave up on mechanical distributors a long time ago. I went crank-trigger and picked up a few points on torque I felt right away and a little bump in MPG.

Switching to a Megajolt system (about $600 and a long weekend) or similar is very straightforward nowadays and there are several of us on here to walk you through it.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=vw+crank+ ... ORM=CHROMN