Points are inferior, but they do work. I think Japanese engines used them in the 1990's. Instead of burning up the starter cranking over the engine, you can remove the distributor and spin it by hand, but jumper the case to BAT- for it to work. Before that, do basic old school tests. Disconnect coil-. Turn key to "run". Measure coil+ to ground. Should be 12.6 V (full battery voltage) since no current is drawn thru the ballast. Connect an inline spark tester (Harbor Freight, $4 w/ neon light) from coil tower to gnd, or just pull pack the rubber and set the factory coil wire w/ metal tip ~1/2" from bare metal on the engine. Touch a jumper from coil- to gnd and release. Isolate your hands or you may get a taze. You should get a spark each time you release. As you hold it, you "charge up" the coil, which takes ~20 msec and that energy goes into a HV spark when you break the current. Don't hold it long or the ballast and coil will get hot. When the engine is running, turning that current on & off, I think you should measure ~8 V (average) from coil+ to gnd, due to the drop across the ballast. Yes, the ballast can get hot, which is why it is ceramic like in an electric hot plate, and even hotter if you leave the key in "run" when the points happen to be closed (don't, watch an early Breaking Bad episode). 67Dart273 is correct that measuring dwell is critical and the true adjustment. The points gap sets the dwell. You set the points by feeler gage just to get close to the proper dwell then fine-tune it based on a dwell meter.
