Timing light
- Thread starter Donald
- Start date
Yes, sometimes just holding the induction clamp on top of the coil is enough to trigger it otherwise use a spark plug tester between the COP and plug and connect the clamp to that.
I'm keeping mine until I can afford a car that has points.
And what would that be? Hmmm - Galaxie, Mustang, Fairlane, Comet, Mercury, Impala SS, Nova, Camaro, Firebird, Corvair, Charger, Barracuda, Hawk .... there are just too many choices. There is a year or many years for each one that I really like. What I need is a 3 car garage.
Only a 3 car?
When my Comet was causing trouble on the road I pulled into a roadside service station and (with the owner's permission) did a quick tune up (filed and set the points, checked the timing) in a back corner in a very few minutes. The owner came over and said, "Third year?" (meaning third year auto mechanic apprentice). "Nope," I said "Year 2 in Med School." When you have an old car that's touchy you carry tools and can do a tune up pretty fast.
The Comet actually needed a new coil - which I didn't carry.
I have a P/U truck that has a distributor with electric ignition. Very seldom I use my timing light, unless the mechanical fuel pump fails and needs to be replaced, then I have to remove the distributor because it's blocking the fuel pump. Upon distribution install that's the only time I have to use the timing light
As I recall, Chrysler introduced electronic ignition in some of their '72 models, and GM for '74. Not sure about Ford.
The Japanese did a watch-and-wait - my '79 Mazda GLC Sport had dual points. The '80 I bought as a parts car had electronic ignition.
Not sure about the European manufacturers. Friends had a c. '83 Dacia (a Romanian-built Renault clone) that wouldn't start. It had points, and I was able get the car going after reconnecting a loose wire.
Remember some electronic ignition systems, especially aftermarket ones made as replacements for points, but also some early factory systems, are still timed the same way points are(by rotating the distributor body). For a lot of refit electronics and early factory electronics, the electronic ignition essentially was/is just an electronic switch(overly simplifying I realize) trigger off the distributor shaft just like points and basically just replaced the mechanic switch(that's all points are) with an electronic one. Advance, both mechanical(centrifigual RPM based with weights and springs) and vacuum works exactly as it does in a points distributor.
I know MGs best as this era car, but I think the general trend applied to all British Leyland vehicles. Around 75 or 76, they started fitting the much-maligned Lucas OPUS system to a modified Lucas 45D distributor body. There again, the distributor handled all the timing/advance. You set base timing by loosening the pinch clamp and rotating the distributor body, just like you'd do on a Lucas 45D with points. OPUS was unreliable enough that some people will fit a points distributor(the earlier 25D is preferred to the 45D). in 79 or so they started using the Lucas CEI system, which is the same as the GM HEI, and again it's based around the same 45D body. The last MGBs sold in the US in 1980 still used this system.
I'm told that if you live in California and have to take your 1979 MGB to be smogged(no 1980s in California) they do sometimes actually hook up a timing light and confirm that the base timing is set to what the under-hood emissions sticker says(20º BTDC @850rpm idle IIRC for the late ones).
I know MGs best as this era car, but I think the general trend applied to all British Leyland vehicles. Around 75 or 76, they started fitting the much-maligned Lucas OPUS system to a modified Lucas 45D distributor body. There again, the distributor handled all the timing/advance. You set base timing by loosening the pinch clamp and rotating the distributor body, just like you'd do on a Lucas 45D with points. OPUS was unreliable enough that some people will fit a points distributor(the earlier 25D is preferred to the 45D). in 79 or so they started using the Lucas CEI system, which is the same as the GM HEI, and again it's based around the same 45D body. The last MGBs sold in the US in 1980 still used this system.
I'm told that if you live in California and have to take your 1979 MGB to be smogged(no 1980s in California) they do sometimes actually hook up a timing light and confirm that the base timing is set to what the under-hood emissions sticker says(20º BTDC @850rpm idle IIRC for the late ones).
I worked on a lot of points ignition in auto shop in high school in the 80s, people in the community would bring their cars to us for a parts-only tuneup, no labor charge for the poor high school students. We actually had a distributor machine and we usually took them out of the car and put them on the machine. As long as you marked where the rotor was when you took the cap off, and put it back in the same place, the procedure really never caused any problems. Of course a timing light was used to set the timing to factory specifications. We set the dwell on the distributor machine, and then did a quick check with a dwell meter once the engine was running. I never once had to reset it when the distributor was back in the car.
Condemed a couple distributors that I would have never known were bad if we hadn't have taken them out and put them on the machine. The arrows would start dancing around 3000 rpm then I'd start wondering how in the world they'd been driving those cars in the first place. Must have misfired like crazy when they gave it the beans.
A lot of students went through these basic maintenance classes, I was one of the senior techs as I was taking the double period Career Mechanics in the afternoon, but was expected to be more or less a TA in the maintenance class. Of course I never did become a mechanic, landed in the tech industry, but I really enjoyed those days back in high school working on cars. Definitely much more than chemistry or english class. But anyway.
Condemed a couple distributors that I would have never known were bad if we hadn't have taken them out and put them on the machine. The arrows would start dancing around 3000 rpm then I'd start wondering how in the world they'd been driving those cars in the first place. Must have misfired like crazy when they gave it the beans.
A lot of students went through these basic maintenance classes, I was one of the senior techs as I was taking the double period Career Mechanics in the afternoon, but was expected to be more or less a TA in the maintenance class. Of course I never did become a mechanic, landed in the tech industry, but I really enjoyed those days back in high school working on cars. Definitely much more than chemistry or english class. But anyway.
