Captain Obvious

I'd be happy to send you my modified caliper for you to use, but by the time you pay for shipping two ways, it would probably be cheaper for you to just pick up a cheap one local and hack the jaws off. So in theory, previous side loading of the bearings shouldn't do anything to cause problems like what you're seeing. In theory none of the (four) races should ever move with respect to the surfaces they are in contact with. In other words, the outer races should never move inside the strut housing, and the inner races should never move with respect to the distance piece. All the movement of the assembly should be contained within the balls. The balls should spin, but all the races should stay stationary. That said, I have heard reports of a bearing partially seizing and spinning it's outer race. I've not had it happen to me or any cars I've done bearings on, but I've heard of some rare cases where the outboard balls got so gummed up that it spun the outboard bearing race in the strut assembly. If that happens, it will wallow out the hole. That issue should be pretty easy to spot. My advice... Take everything apart, clean all the mating surfaces thoroughly. Inspect all of the important surfaces under magnification and look for kicked up burrs, embedded chunks of whatever, and signs of previous improper assembly. I've seen burrs kicked up on the bores of the strut assembly from forcing a misaligned bearing down into the bore. That previous misaligned assembly caused subsequent bearings to go in a little cocked and not spin free. Bottom line... Clean. Inspect. Align. Don't just use more force to push the bearings into place and think they will straighten out as you push them in. Get the bearings started by hand, tap a little with a light tool. Make sure they are aligned properly, and then use perpendicular (normal) force to finish the install of each bearing. I use a caliper to make sure the bearings are aligned before I set them on the press. I install the outboard bearing into the hub first, then put the axle shaft into place. Then drop in the distance piece and put the inboard bearing into place. That's my order of assy, but ymmv.

Yeah, I'm thinking we're a little too far apart for you to bring the parts to my place. Haha!! So I'm not sure what you mean about getting exact measures, but if you're talking about measuring the strut housing and your current distance piece to confirm that they are the correctly paired together, then I've done that. I had to modify a tool to appease the the Z-Gods that day, but it was worth it. I cut the internal measuring jaws off a cheap dial caliper and that gave me the clearance to stick it into the bore on the strut housing to get a decent measurement of the distance between the bearing mounting faces. Went like this... Modified caliper with the jaws ground off: That allowed me to stick it inside the strut cavity and get a measurement to compare against the distance piece:

So what was the assembly process you used? The order of events? Did you press the outboard bearing onto the stub axle first, or did you press the outboard bearing into the strut housing first and then push the stub axle through it? And where are you located? You anywhere near Philadelphia?

Yes. But I'm thinking that maybe the outboard bearing wasn't fully seated properly against the face on the stub axle, or the inboard bearing was binding up on the axle shaft or the ID of the strut housing during assembly. In any event, its important to make sure everything is done properly along the way or the system doesn't work properly. As for the Brinelling, yes again. You really aren't ever supposed to put force through the balls into any bearing race during assembly. But there's really only one way to do an assembly process on the rear hubs that avoids putting force through the balls and it's complicated. I did it once, but probably not worth the gyrations. Most of the press fits in the rear bearing job are "loose press", and don't require huge amounts of force. I've convinced myself that even though you aren't supposed to put force through the balls, it's a low amount of force that it's "OK" to do it. This most recent time (couple days ago), I installed new Silver Mine 5-lug stub axles, and the bearings were loose enough that they were not even a press fit. The bearings just slipped onto the axles. A little disappointing since any play in that location could/would result in wheel run-out. Sure, it made assembly easier, and I didn't have to put any force through the balls, but it's at the expense of accuracy.

Oh, and get me now... I just went through rear wheel bearings a few days ago. I've done a bunch in the past, but it's currently fresh in my mind.

I suspect that the distance piece is fine and the issue all revolves around proper bearing seating and squareness. The bearing races are often a press fit on the stub axle, and if yours are like that, pushing one bearing in deeper might push the other out. Inside the housing, the inner races aren't even contacting the distance piece at all. It's just kinda floating in there. Can you describe the assembly process you went through. Steps you followed when you installed the new bearings?

Screenshot of the bots joining the forum. Saw something like this the other day too. Wow.

ARA is typically an aftermarket air conditioning system. As in ARA Manufacturing: But that shouldn't engage anything behind the driver's seat. In front of it maybe, but behind it??

Nice. Great start for a project. I'm not convinced on the original paint though. Hard to tell from 3000 miles away, but I'm thinking it's been resprayed.

Got it. Yeah, I'd pull the distributor unit off and spin the shaft and watch how it looks when you spin it. Take a look both with and without a rotor installed, and as Zed Head mentioned, also put the rotor and cap on and see if you can hear it making contact inside as you spin it.

Is the location (cylinder) that gets chewed up always in the same spot? I'm wondering if maybe the distributor shaft is bent. If you pull it, it would be easy to spin it by hand and watch to see if the air gap changes as you spin it. The air gap should be the same for all positions of the shaft, but if it's not, the shaft might be tweaked.

If you take the whole distributor off as a unit, it doesn't change the timing (except for the small amount of play in the mounting bolt holes). By "as a unit", I mean like this. The engagement shaft is asymmetric and only fits one way. You can pull the whole thing and put it back and not change the timing:

I'm not convinced that you have an ignition problem. First, you said that the spark at the points is weak and intermittent. My reaction that it "Good. Your condenser is working." In other words, you don't WANT a spark at the points because any spark there will eat up your points. The whole reason for the condenser is to suppress the spark on the low voltage (the points side) of the coil in order to extend points longevity. Don't consider a weak spark there a problem. Consider it a benefit. Second, you say you're getting 8.5 Ohms between the open points and ground. I do not necessarily believe that is a problem either. What you could be measuring is the load to ground of all the other things that are tied to that same B/W wire elsewhere in the car. Such as..... Your fuel gauge, your water temp and oil gauge, the tach, your choke light, etc. I could easily be convinced that all that stuff in parallel works out to your 8.5 Ohms. So... Have you looked for spark at a spark plug? A nice hot spark there would be desirable!! If you have good spark at the plugs, then have you put a timing light on it

It's been a while since I've messed with one of those idle mixture screws and don't remember how many turns it takes in order to take it all the way out, but I believe there is an O-ring seal around the head. (Either there's an O-ring on it, or maybe I made one and put an O-ring on it? Don't remember.) But, in any event... I wouldn't want that screw to be run out more than maybe five or six turns. If it takes more than that, I think you might want to look into possibilities in other areas for running rich. Without and AFR gauge I think your plan is sound assuming you aren't having to run that screw out more than five or six.

Sounds like someone did a bunch of hacking on that car. So you mentioned a "distributor module"... Not exactly sure what you're talking about, but if you are talking about an ignition module on the outside of the distributor, then that car is not supposed to have such a thing. Can you take a couple pics of the distributor and the coil area?