how to use handheld tach - dwell - point meter

[bike5087]

I was recently given a Balkamp tach-dwell-points meter. It has two leads - negative and positive with clips. How do I use this thing?

[Dragon]

Negative to ground, and Positive to coil negative.

[fordman]

ok once it is hooked up and the reading is off how do you change the reading. i mean what parts do you adjust to majke the dwell correct? the points? arent they set with a gap gauge? or is the dwell meter more acurrate?

[Dragon]

You shut it off open the cap and gap the points. Yes a pain but it can make you real good with feeler gauge. The Dwell meter is a good test on a Ford because not a good dwell time means less coil voltage. On an externally adjustable dizzy they were the best way of setting the points.

[James72]

The Dwell meter is more acurate, set the dwell before the timing, if you change the dwell it will change the timing too

[fordman]

see i still dont understand how to do it on a ford. if its not the points you adjust then what or how is it being adjusted.

[James72]

it is for the points, it measures how long they are open, if you need more dwell open them up a bit, it's very fine tuning but it's worth it

[fordman]

ok that is what i thought i was reading. thanks.

[Dragon]

You hook it up like a tach so it picks up the firing signal. The different knob positions just changes what it reads. The tach part measures the opening cycle of the points and gives you the rpm. Dwell setting measures the amount of time the points are closed and reads out in degrees. The points setting is an ohm meter. It measures the resistance of the points being closed and it's needle tells you when the points are good or bad if the condenser is bad or the coil is bad.

You set the points like normal at .017 on a Ford FE or SBF. That is the max opening at the top of the cam. Dwell measures the closed time and is, I believe 35 degrees. The amount of time the point set is closed.

So if your gap is smaller then the Dwell is higher. So you shut it off and align the cam to open the points at maximum. If .017 gauge feels right it can't be if the dwell is longer so you tweak the points open a hair more and fire it again.

When you set the points on a car you really are setting the dwell time. More open is less dwell, less open is more dwell. Put a Accel conversion kit on and they take the hassle away. Put a electronic computer controlled dizzy on and you will have more dwell less gap time. The Accel unit mimics the Ford points being adjusted correctly. The racing dizzy does what it needs to get you to 10,000 rpm at 60,000 volts to jump the gap in the high compression race motor.

Another note in the days of high compression we could street race with our stock systems but the cylinders did not get full spark so we did not get full burn. When Accel came out with the giant Monster coil then we could fire the plugs in 13.0 to 1 engines every time mostly, cleanly. When Duraspark came out our internal timing test for Duraspark was the Dwell time. What electronics dod for us was give us better precision and higher voltages because the dwell time was longer.