Old trick I just made up?

[Tom Sarno]

I was setting the timing on my small block and did not have a dial back light. I wanted to set it at 35 total and planed on marking off three ten degree marks (using the 0-10 distance from the timing mark) and using that mark to set it at an additional 5 degrees, when being both fat and lazy forced me to think up something easier then laying on the ground and reaching under the car. It dawned on me that the cylinders are 45 degrees apart from each other and I could hook the light to the #8 wire and set the timing at 10 degrees after on # 8 resulting in #1 being 35.

Is this an old trick that no one ever told me?

Thanks
Tom

[Clem Z.]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

just measure the circumfernce of the damper and divide by 10 and this gives you 36 degrees to mark the damper.

[Kris Schmalenberg]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

Mr. Gasket makes tape that you can place around the balancer. It starts at 0 and is marked every 2 degrees after. It worked really well for me.

[Bob Simard]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

Don't trust your old trick. The cylinders are 90 degrees apart, NOT 45. It takes two revolutions of the crank to fire all eight cylinders.

[Tom Sarno]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

They fire once for every revolution, thats true, but each cylinder has a top dead center 45 degrees from each other. That is why the crank rotates twice for each rotation of the cam. That is why you can time the motor off the #6 wire.

Tom

[Duke W.]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

I've rethought this. It won't work. The cylinders fire at 90 degree intervals. That's what you read with a timing light. The cam and dist. only rotate 45* with 90* of crank rotation, but crank rotation is what you're concerned with.

If you time the engine on #1 then connect the light to #2 you will find the mark 90* advanced and 90* retarded on #8.

I should have know this, but for some reason my mind was running on 16 cylinders instead of 8. I will delete my previous post.

Duke

[Chas Kingston]

Re: Old trick I just made up?

I wondered how long it would take for this realization to hit. I kept my mouth shut, cuz nobody really trusts an old coot. But, if nobody else had spoken up by now, I would have.

Geezer