Timing light - dumber is better.

[Peter Florance]

I know all of you know not to use adjustable or smart timing light on wasted spark applications, but how about dizzy cars?

Last Saturday I was using customer's MAC Tools timing light on distributor setup and got a lot of timing scatter at 3000 rpm.
Lately I've started bringing my dumb Craftsman timing light ($20.00 on ebay - no knob) regardless of what the car owner says he has, and I tried it on the car. Rock steady timing with no changes to setup.

Moral of story: Find a light that works and trust no adjustable light unless you are sure it really works. Keep a dumb light as a reference and sanity check.

I've had bad results with SnapOn and MAC 'smart' timing lights when used with MegaSquirt.

[Heribert]

Agree, compeletely.
And to add, I have had quite a lot of problems to get the clamp-on sensors to work on EDIS wasted spark and on
other wasted spark coils. Many , but not all, clamp on timing lights work on only one of the plug leads in each pair.
Not a real problem, once you know. But until then, confusing reigns!
To reduce this nuisance factor I always use an old, dumb, direct connection timing light when strobing wasted spark set ups .
If you have one, hold on to it!

Best regards

Heribert

[Random Hero]

We too have been having a problem getting two different dial-back timing lights to work with our EDIS 6 setup. Gets no signal at all clamped on the #1 plug wire. Looks like I need to get myself a "dumber" timing light, lol.

[DonTZ125]

Hi, Peter.

Are you using the digital timing light in 2-stroke or 4-stroke mode?

[Peter Florance]

Hi, Peter.

Are you using the digital timing light in 2-stroke or 4-stroke mode?

I don't recall if it had a choice. This last one was a distributor based car so I didn't think I had to use 2 stoke mode.