With the adjustable advance you can time everything off the TDC mark. If you do not have an advance feature on the light you need to replace the pulley with a degree wheel pulley or make new marks on your old pulley. With these you time to the maximum advance desired instead of setting it at idle. I would get a timing light with an adjustable advance feature if you are running or plan to run a non stock distributor like a Bosch 009. Just about any new timing light should have these features but some old ones that you may find on the used market used neon lamps (dim) and some timing lights may not have the inductive clamp (PITA). I would not bother with any strobe timing light that did not have an inductive pickup clamp and xenon lamp. If everything (distributor, pulley, points) is bone stock you can either static time it with just a 12v (or 6v) test light or use a basic strobe. On this engine you can use a home made static timing/test light and feeler gauge, the latest digital timing light and automotive multi-meter, or anything in between. You just need to decide which features you want. They are backwardly compatible so you do not need to get any sort of "old school" timing light. This helps to see the timing marks.Īny modern timing light will work. Used by people who actually know what they are doing, andĤ. This will go around the wire itself and not require pulling or even, God Forbid, piercing the wire.Īny unit that doesn't meet those two requirements toss in the trash.ģ. An 'induction' connector for the spark plug wire. Two wires that hook to positive and negative on the battery.Ģ. I use a Jacobs’s ignition timing light with dial back, but I've had it for so many years I couldn't say what they sell for.Īny timing light worth putting in the tool box will haveġ. For your purposes these you would consider non-adjustable. Still later many cars went to Coil Over plug or other variants that don't even have distributors. This started in the 80's and became more and more common. Later cars often have fixed timing, thus no adjustment. On electronic ignitions you can use the timing light to set the initial timing, which is then adjusted on the fly by the ignition control module. Many you were not supposed to adjust but you could.Įxample CCC and CCCC GM ignitions were quite adjustable.Ī GOOD timing light will have 'dial to back to zero' capabilities. The mid range, 72-90's ignitions often had adjustments, though they were virtually all electronic. Yes, you can do the same thing with a degree tape or a degreed damper, but you might need two people to be able to watch the tach and damper at the same time.The old Kettering (points) ignitions were fully adjustable. Then you look to see how many degrees you have the light advanced. I just went to my desired rpm and clicked the advance/retard button until the timing mark flashed on ZERO degrees. It has two digital windows side-by-side, one reads rpm and other reads the advance you have it set at. Got to say it was REAL easy to determine when your advance is coming in. I used a friends Snap-On digital a couple of weeks ago. He said the others, (dial type),will be off by 4 or 5 degrees when you are at full advance. If I got this all wrong I appologize in "advance" !!!! HA! HA!Īccording to Ignitionman the only rollback lights that work with modern ignition systems are the high end digitals like Snap-On, or MAC. as I would like to own one of these useful tools myself! I am no help as far as what brand to buy, but I will watch other replies to your post and see what suggestions other guys may make. Maybe someone else can clear this up for both of us. The only thing I am not sure of is if you need to add your initial timing to the timing found as explained earlier. You would then read the amount of timing marked off in degrees around the outside of the knob and that is your total timing at this rpm. They way I understand it, you can set your rpm anywhere you wish and "dial back" the timing mark to zero using the knob on the timing light (by "dial back", I mean watching the timing mark on balancer while your engine is running and adjusting the knob to bring back the timing mark to zero degrees). Although I don't own one and have never used one, these devices are very useful for discovering the amount of timing your engine has at any given rpm.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |