![]() The most common form of timing lights powered by a simple pair of clamps hooked to a 12-volt battery source. ![]() These lights use batteries in the body of the light that amplifies the signal from the inductive pickup on the plug wire. The simplest timing lights are self-powered. Timing lights can be described in a number of ways, so let’s go over that with a short description of each. All guns today use an inductive pickup that surrounds the plug wire and picks up the electro-magnetic energy that surrounds the plug as the voltage passes through the plug wire. Your grandfather might have one of those lying around his shop. In the old days, all timing lights used a small spring that fit between the spark plug and the plug wire that was connected by a clamp to send a high-voltage trigger to the light. That stroboscopic flash is intended to ‘freeze’ the location of the timing mark on the harmonic balancer relative to a timing tab usually attached to the engine’s front timing chain cover. A simple timing light is really nothing more than a stroboscope designed to flash when triggered by the spark from the engine’s Number one cylinder. We’ll start with the basic light and then move on to the more sophisticated dial-back versions and how they function. Over the course of decades of technical writing, we’ve discovered that not everybody understands how a timing light functions and the insights it can offer on the state of tune of your engine. But for the remainder of the performance world that does rely on distributors, a timing light is an essential tuning device. Transistor distributors have to be rotated rather quickly, but it works on them also.īest part about this method is the vacume and centrifugal advance do not muddy up the situation and you can have 'XX' degress advance at ZERO rpm.It’s a sign of the times when late model engines with distributorless ignition systems (DIS) no longer require the services of the ubiquitous timing light. Works on any spark ignition engine no matter how many cylinders. Repeat 3 & 4 until you are comfortable of housing position when spark occurs and snug down clamp. Rotate dist housing counter clockwise until you get a spark at test plug.ĥ. With key switch on, rotate dist housing clockwise well past your #1 terminal. Let the plug lay on intake manifold where you can observe gap and it will have a decent ground.ģ. Install a spare plug wire with spark plug in desired #1 terminal. Make certain #1 is on the compression stroke.Ģ. Turn crank until you have balancer mark aligned with desired advance mark on timing tab. I've had a Sun inductive timing light for over 30 years but. Coupled with a handheld vacuum pump and you can check the vacuum advance curve running too. There are lots of other things you can do with one.Including checking the mechanical advance curves right on the car. I wouldnt do this with a turbo, because the vacuum retard is such an intergral part of the tuning. In fact most (but not all) engines in general will take 34-36 degrees total timing to run best. Example 65 110 - 14 initial + 20 mechanical = 34 degrees total timing. To figure out what number from 34-37 to dial back to.go to PatioMatt's distritutor page and add the initial setting to the total mechanical advance number. This will account for slop inthe distributor and dwell change. Don't worry about the stock initial spec. And wherever your timing is is where you should set it. Then let it idle down and turn the dial back to 0. Then when you set timing, disconnect the vacuum, dial the light back to 33-37 degrees, start it up, run it up to speed until the advance marker stops moving, and set the distributor to 0 degrees.
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