Dwell angle

Fairly certain that is a Continental L head, old standard for seemingly Forever for all towmotor/forklift makers.

Should be centrifugal weights under the plate, attached with springs to the shaft, an ear on the weight engaging the movable rotor support and points cam. Springs, weights and all the engagement points need to be fairly snug fits, a little slop but not excessive and has to return to collapsed when stopped.

Engine: Flat-Head, 4-cyl Continental Red Seal.
Red seal is stamped on the exhaust manifold. Did a google search. Ended in some G.I. BB, where the thread was about what kind f engine is a “Red Seal” engine.

https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?66985-Red-seal-engine

Ferdinand, yes, it is a vintage (circa 1978? Or perhaps older?) Sears/Craftman reader, part of the set I bought back then. A set because it came with a separate strobe gun.

Dwell; I wish I could fix it, but gaping doesn’t. As DMiller suggested, take off plate, or work on the distributor shaft... Too much work, particularly without having an acurate factory spec for the dwell. Some say 45-50. Some say 60-65. As it is right now, I am at 61, within the range of one set of data. It starts at first crank, no smoke out the butt, no misfiring, plenty power. In fact, since I did a refurbishig of all ignition components, except ignigtion switch, but including some of the wiring, I can tilt, spread, and side-shift the forks with just idle. The later used to require some serious rpm’s to prevent stalling..

Points’ gap like I had it, 0.020
Here is a link to a PDF of the originl Winsconsin Engine o manual - http://www.wiengines.com/public/static/wm/images/catalogs/continental/TM_Operator_Repair_manual.pdf

I'ts a flathead conti... the coil is probably original... the point cam lobes have been around the world several million times and you're running gaseous fuel...  so... make sure the advance weights and mechanism move freely, set the gap so that it'll fire consistently... then adjust timing so that it runs well 'by ear'.... starts well, idles solid, and is controllable from idle to just-off-idle... and revs freely to governed limit.

Then start it up, and let it idle for a good long time.  If the coil gets really hot, then you'll have to worry about dwell.  If not, smile and run the heck out of it.  If it burns out, replace the coil with an internal-resistor-type coil from the farm store.

The reason why 'dwell' was ever a concern, is because the ignition coil 'needs' a finite amount of time to build a magnetic field... and to make it do so rapidly in high-speed multi-cylinder engines, manufacturers used larger-gauge wire and fewer turns (higher coil-current), and then attempted to 'protect' the coil primary winding from burning up by limiting it's 'on time' duty cycle... aka 'dwell'.  the advantage to doing it this way, was that the coil would fire very, very well with reduced system voltage... like... 4v in a 6v system, and 9v in a 12v system. 

Why would they do that?  Well, because when the engine is CRANKING, the system voltage available to ignition is naturally kinda low.  In '60's/'70's era cars and trucks, a resistor was used in series with ignition coils to intentionally LIMIT the amount of current through the coil when engine is running... to protect the coil from being burned up from full system (13.8-14.2ish)... but the resistor is bypassed during cranking to provide a nice, hot spark during cold start.

Your gaseous fuel system really, really requires a hot spark... nature of the beast... but when they're set up right, they run forever, and clean as a whistle.

If it continues to give you fits, I recommend you fit the engine with an electronic trigger ignition system... they generally all control coil duty cycle in such a way that the coil can run dramatically lower impedance primary windings, hence very high coil current for a very short time, and a very, very intense spark.  I fitted my Hyster H50H with a Pertronix kit, and although it's the most gutless engine on the planet, it will nonetheless start under the worst conditions, and run solid at an idle speed about 20rpm slower than CRANKING speed... which when the engine and hydraulic oil is cold, that's a real bonus.

Well, if it's running fine, and the coil isn't overheating, I'd just run the wheels off'a it and smile.

Yeah, the paint thing is wierd... but the grease not-so-much.  I have two forklifts, and have worked on many others, and the one thing that never ceases to amaze me, is how much grease and grime ends up in one... even if it's just running circles around the inside of a warehouse full of pallets of cardboard boxes.

It's like Southern California raining on the only day you forget to close the sunroof... and able to find three dozen Phillips screwdrivers when you absolutely, positively need a standard...

So I'll enlighten you to the basic truth I've reached:

There are only two things in the world we can REALLY depend on:

Gravity
and
Triangles.

Cats not so much, but Gravity and Triangles.

And I'll postulate that the key component of our earth's cohesive nature is Forklifts. 

See, Forklifts naturally attract dirt and grime, and in doing so, they magnify their own mass, hence gravity... and from this, we can, in confidence, deduce that all the soil of the earth is held in cohesion by the presence of large quantities of forklifts deep within the earth's core.

And also realise that, since all cats have four legs... and all dogs have four legs...
That all dogs are cats.

Merry Christmas All!!!