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[Exile]

Just a quick note to celebrate the successful resetting of Thumper's timing. I've never played with the points and such before so it was with some trepidation and with the help of the TDC finder tool (from our hosts) that I went to determine whether or not Thumper was firing at the right point. Turns out, he wasnt. He was firing right at TDC.

I advanced the timing by the appropriate 0.8 mm before TDC and WOW! What a difference. Tickover appears more even, sounds better and acceleration seems to be better.

Apparently, it's the small stuff that makes the big difference. Question is, would it be worth investing in a timing light?

[Norm]

Exile,
The advantage of using a timing light is you can check where it is running at full advance which is where it does most of its work as opposed to static setting it where you can only assume that it will throw to the correct full advance. The advance bob weight setup is fairly primitive

[Alan (Lancashire)]

you might be very worried when you connect a timing light, due to the "vintageness" of the bullet , with a gear driven distributor , with worn bushes (and play in gears) that the timeing light darts all over the place.

the timeing at tickover is immaterial , it is the timeing at running/high revs you need to worry about.

manualy advance the A/R unit and take a static reading for full advanced.

[PeteF]

A timing light would be a waste of money on this sort of engine. Now you know how to do it you can make small adjustments to the timing and see if it runs better. If it's too advanced it'll let you know by kicking back and possible pinking. You already know the symptoms of retarded ignition. Points should be checked fairly regularly as the gap can alter because of wear and the points gap does effect the timing. Mr H sells a little device to lock the auto advance so that you can time at full advance, albeit statically. Small scratch marks on the distributor/points plate let you make small adjustments and always get back to where you were if your alteration makes things worse.

[Norm]

I have never seen one jump around they always advance nice and smoothly but it is always comforting for me to know where it is so I can just ignore timing as being an issue, but each to their own,

[Norm]

I would expect you could pick up a cheap light at an auto jumble and I just like watching the 2 little dots coming together