1981 308 GTSi US distributor rotor tip loose

Its bad. Too bad, those are expensive.

 

I have had a few that were loose over the years. I use a high temp Epoxy and had no trouble. Way to expensive to toss out.

 

My car had narrower white plastic rotors installed (dual distributor set up). Are these different for points vs electronic or why did they make the change?

 

I think that they thought they made an "improvement" on the 2Vi dist rotor design, then they went back to the better carb dist rotor design with a wider tip for the QV.

If you've got the narrow tip carb dist rotors, you can upgrade to the 124288 QV dist rotor that is less fussy about the rotor-to-cap alignment:

https://www.ferrariparts.co.uk/part/ferrari/124288

The early extra narrow and narrow carb 308 dist rotors:

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The better 124288 308QV dist rotor with the wider tip of the 2Vi dist rotor (which was an improvement), but which reverted back to the rotor mounting and dist shaft design of the carb 308:

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Cap is probably fine unless a lot of metal was removed. Just deburr the metal part of the contact with fine emery or sandpaper if required. The problem is the rotor, and/or perhaps the upper bearing. The cap, after all, doesn't move in operation.

 

Brian - In your experience, have you ever encountered any other model of car (Fiat, Alfa, etc.) which shares this rotor?

Or did Ferrari design this part to be unique to this engine/model, for some reason?

 

Yes, for points the timing advance is a mechanical system in the distributor that adjust the time that the rotor tip aligns with the distributor contact pole. With electronic ignition the timing of the spark is controlled by the Digiplex box and the rotor is fixed so the contact has to be wider in order to be in contact with the pole throughout the entire timing advance range.

 

I have no idea about either. As I recall they used to be much more expensive.