L head distributor

hey guys new here. I just picked up a 58 rambler American a couple weeks ago. The car was running decent for the most part until i decided to do a tune up and when i changed out the points in the little plastic piece that you screw the points and condenser to just crumbled upon removal. so my question is does any one have this piece or do i need to find a whole new distributor? oh and by the way i have an early production 58 so its equipped with the 50-55 nash distributor. Any help would be much appreciated. thanks in advance.

I bought a machine screw and some nylon nuts to replace what broke but for some reason it still Mis fires likes crazy. I filled in the gap on the distributor housing with silicone come to find out that's semi conductive. So I cleaned that out and filled it with contact cement and it still has a mis fire everything from plugs wires cap rotor points condenser is all new. I tried 2 different coils with the same issue. Yesterday it would run fine for about 30 seconds then start misfiring. I pulled the cap to watch the points spark and they would spark fine for about 10 rotations then cut out then spark fine then cut out. If I can find an electronic ignition for that distributor that would be great.

It's at 14.3 volts while running. I put an accel super stock coil in it to see if maybe more spark would help and it did the exact same thing. I've gone thru this thing about 5 times even put all the old stuff back in with the same results.

Some coils have an internal resistance -- usually GM -- but most need a ballast resistor. The resistor allows full battery voltage to the coil for starting, but reduces voltage to about half as it heats up. Running the engine at full voltage will quickly burn up points and condensor, and can cause problems like internal arcing and cross firing, similar to what you're experiencing.

You can't use the OHV distributor on the L-head, but later models (at least 63-65, might start in 62) used Delco distributors. You can interchange the Delco with the Autolite, but need to use the Delco coil as well. Delco coils don't use an external distributor. None of the 58-60 American wiring diagrams show a ballast resistor to the coil from the factory, but it's over 50 years old -- who knows what coil it has in there? I'd try the ballast resistor and see if that helps.

Someone had replaced the original coil. I put a ballast resistor in and it fixed my problem I think. It ran fine for about 15 minutes till she ran out of fuel. Gonna fill her up tonight and see how she runs.