A friend owns a 1966 Mercedes Benz 230SL. He brought it over last night as it was running very rough. I pulled off the distributor cap and looked at the points and rotor. I cleaned the rotor and lightly sanded the contacts. The manual indicated the points gap was about .015". I bumped the starter to get the points rider on top of one of the lobes. The point gap measured about .008". I readjusted the gap to .015". Put everything back together but it seemed to run worse.

I hooked up my timing light (inductive type) to check to see if each spark plug was firing. At idle, my light didn't fire on 2 of 6 plugs unless we stepped on the gas slightly to increase the idle. Then they all fired.

I had him put some gas dri in the tank to see if it was moisture related. He was able to drive it home but could never get it past about 50 mph.

How could the car run with the point gap off so much? He has no idea when the last tuneup was. Would the first steps be to change out the following - points, rotor, cap, condenser, coil, plugs and plug wires?

If not what would be your recommendations?