I never found a shop that had a test stand for a distributor, much
less knew how to work on one. If the dist was suspect, the drill was
to get a dist out of the junkyard, install new points and cond. and
set the gap or dwell. The theory involves dwell, but in practice, if
you set the gap right, you never need a dwell meter. I always
checked the gap on several different lobes of the cam to be sure it
was right. I also found that when you install a dist, if you turn
the dist to the point where the gap just opens to the spec with the
crank set to the timing mark, the timing is right on. you can check
it with a light, but if you do this carefully, you never need a
timing light or dwell meter. I invented that trick the first time I
ever messed with timing, on a 69 BMW R50/2 magneto. Lots of old
mechanics knew it. It saved my bacon more than once.
On 9/24/2010 9:53 PM, Dieselhead wrote:
The book method is to have a remote starter button, but I'd use it
so seldom that I never thought it was worth it. Kinda like a dwell
meter. I always set the points by gap. When I finally got up
enough jingees to afford a dwell meter, I found my gap was more
accurate than the meter.
<<SNIP>>
Assbackwards thinking here. The performance requirement on the old
systems was the degrees of dwell to saturate the coil. *The point
gap was given as a reference figure* to the backyard mechanic who
didn't have access to proper timing & setting equipment.
"Back in the day', a good shop would put the distributor on a bench
machine and set the dwell and timing advance. They than set the
initial timing when installing the distributor.
Problem, due to all the mechanics involved, the optimun settings
were very short lived and you need consistent high quality fuel.
My gas burners usually go 100Kmi with no ignition related maintainance.
--
Pete Arnold
"You win some, You loose some and You wreck some!
-Dale Earnhardt-
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_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
