Dizzy shaft end play

[Javabean]

I've got an old dual advance dizzy sitting on the shelf that I wanted to try replacing my Load o Matic with before stepping up to something electronic. While cleaning it up, I noticed the shaft has a little side to side play in it (as well as up & down) and I don't want to stab it into my engine if it's way out of tolerance. How much side to side play is allowable on the distributor shaft before it's considered too worn? If any at all.

Thanks,
Jay

 

[mustang6]

According to the shop manual, with the distributor out of the engine there should be no discernible side to side play in the shaft/bushings, and end play should be between 0.022-0.033 inches.

With the distributor in the car, it mentioned putting a dwell gauge on it and watching for dwell fluctuations as the engine was revved up and down the RPM range: 3% dwell variation was the max variation acceptable for a load-o-matic, 6% was the max for a centrifugal advance unit.