Some folks can take anything and make filth out of it.

Me too sometimes.

The vibrator was used to chop the car's 6 volt DC battery voltage into alternating current that could be run through a transformer to step the voltage up to something that could be used for the plate voltage of the tubes, to make them work. Today with very low voltage transistors and integrated circuits, this isn't needed much any more. Since the vibrator was constantly making and breaking a 6 volt voltage with plenty of amperes of current, the points could get really arced over and the whole thing wouldn't work. I'd be surprized to find new vibrators available today, but a couple of hours in a parts store should get you most of that you need to make a solid state invertor that will never burn out.

Dave
Who started off in big tube sets, progressed to small tube sets, then to sometimes transistor sets, and now lives in an era with only one tube in *some* electronics, is the picture tube.

Back then we just knew that transistors and solid state would never overtake vacuum tubes, but over 25 years ago I was given a tour through a Cobra Dane radar sysem where even the antenna was merely a surface of high powered solid state transistors, that didn't rotate. The beam was made to move by the phasing of the drive voltages to the transistors that made up the face of the antenna. Those transistors had power cables a good 3" across, so they could light anything up all the way to Moscow.