![]() Most light units on the market today, however, clip right to the spark plug wire itself. With a few of the timing lights out there, you might have to attach the unit's spark signal pick-up wire directly to the spark plug tip. #Advance timing light manual#(If you're not sure which is the "Number 1" spark plug wire, stop! And get thee to a service manual or online owners' forum for your vehicle.) Lastly, you take the signal wire and clamp it directly to the Number 1 spark plug wire. With the engine off, you merely clamp the timing light's red wire to the battery's positive terminal, then the black wire to the battery's negative terminal. Getting your timing light ready for action is breathtakingly simple. That is, as long as your car runs and is connected to a working 12-volt battery. One cool thing about timing lights is that unlike a flashlight, you never have to worry about running out of juice to power the light. Newer cars with distributorless ignition systems use a computer to control the ignition process.) (This information, by the way, applies to mostly older vehicles, which use a distributor to send electrical energy to the spark plugs. More importantly, the more expensive the timing light is, the more likely it will be easier to read even in bright conditions. But most people would probably prefer the much cooler, ray gun-shaped, "pistol grip" variety.because they're more ergonomic inside the close confines of a car's engine bay (yeah, that's it). The simplest and least expensive timing lights fit into a basic pen shape. And who doesn't want that?įirst, you should know that timing lights come in a few different shapes and sizes, and range in features from bare-bones functionality to lots of bells and whistles. Properly adjusted timing, in turn, helps to make sure your engine works at peak power and efficiency. Some older timing lights require the removal of the spark plug boot in order to attach a direct pickup between the wire's terminal and the centre conductor of the spark plug.Simply put, a timing light helps to fine tune when the spark fires from the spark plug and ignites your car's fuel. Power for the strobe comes directly from the vehicle's battery. Self-contained units used to time automotive engines have an inductive pickup that clamps around the proper spark plug wire and serves as the trigger for the strobe. Timing lights using xenon strobe lamps electronically triggered by the spark provide brighter light, allowing use of the timing lamp under normal shop lighting or daylight conditions.Ī timing light may be a self-contained instrument, but is sometimes combined with a voltmeter, RPM meter, and a dwell angle meter, or may be incorporated into a more comprehensive instrument such as an engine analyser. Simple timing lights may just contain a neon lamp operated by the energy provided by the ignition circuit. #Advance timing light series#In few cases an engine is timed off another cylinder, such as the International Harvester V8 engines, which use #8, and the Isuzu 4Z series four-cylinder, which is timed off the #4 cylinder, or the 3 cylinder Saab two-stroke engine which is timed on the middle (#2) cylinder. On most automotive engines, the timing is set based on the #1 cylinder. The distributor can be rotated slightly until the reference pointer aligns with the specified point on the timing scale.įuel-injected engines, or engines with microprocessor controls may require special procedures to allow basic spark timing to be observed without control effects from the engine computer. A reference pointer is attached to the flywheel housing or other fixed point, and an engraved scale gives the offset between the spark time and the top dead centre position of the piston in the cylinder. The apparent position of the marks, frozen by the stroboscopic effect, indicates the current timing of the spark in relation to piston position. The timing light is connected to the ignition circuit and used to illuminate the timing marks on the engine's crankshaft pulley or flywheel, with the engine running. Modern electronically controlled passenger vehicle engines require use of a scan tool to display ignition timing. The black clamp connects to the battery -, the red clamp to +, the green one to the breaker side of the coil (for RPM), the big black clamp in the foreground is an inductive pick-up that clamps around a spark plug wire.Ī timing light is a stroboscope used to dynamically set the ignition timing of an Otto cycle or similar internal combustion engine equipped with a distributor. Timing light, combination instrument with RPM, volt meter and dwell angle meter. ![]()
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