A Newbies Adventures in Maintenanceland!

I gotcha now, my gun does have an advance dial on it. I'll check it out!

OK a good thing to have, now go back to where you had your advance curve picture. Shows the timing at various RPM. You can confirm it with your advance wheel, using the TDC mark and the tach. So besides the Idle timing, the "Total" advance at what RPM is really much more important, and how fast it gets there. Once you get the 2 pick-ups synced then moving the whole plate you can play with the "Total" advance. See nads.com's post, he he.

9am53 wrote:

The issue is not the advancer per se, but that the pickups can be adjusted independantly (electronic ignition) so there is a chance that the 2+3 pickup is slightly off. So 1+4 could be perfectly set, but 2+3 might be slightly retarder or advanced and might need some slight adjusting to time it correectly.

Is it for certain that each pick-up coil allows for some independent adjustment? If so, is independent adjustment of pick-up coils covered in the FSM?

The FSM as to 1979 electronic ignition doesn't mention possibility of independently adjusting either pick-up coil.


Good Fortune!

they are independently mounted, so I would presume this was for independent tuning if necessary. The manual doesn't mention it, but it doesn't mention a lot of things.

Is this with Dyna S or stock electronics?

all stock baby...

Motor Head wrote:

If you have a light with a built in advance feature you can use it to set them the same, Dial or Digital, set to advace of 1-4 @ Idle and make the 2-3 read the same, using only the TDC marks.

BINGO!!! :laugh: Damn... beat me to it. :laugh:

Sync carbs DYNAMICALLY. Set timing DYNAMICALLY. All the backyard static crap is soooo far off, its damn funny! :silly:

OK, so like he said. Set your gun to 10 degrees advance (or whatever is the initial advance @idle setting in your manual), and adjust timing plate/pickup till both 1&4, and 2&3 align with the T marks. DONE!

If you have to, you can notch out the timing plate/pickup mounts with a drill to assist adjustments.

Good luck. - ok no more good luck. My new saying is - Do it, just DO IT.

Just wondering if since the advance plate is OEM with pick-up assy's, did you find any spread in the timing where the two pick-ups needed adjusting?
Did you happen to check that the factory "T" marks, both 1-4 &2-3, are actually correct? Probably pretty close if its the original parts. But could be off several degrees too.

I didn't check them per se, but last winter when I was putting the top end back together and I was putting my cams in and whatnot the TDC marks were bang on. Not sure if this is what you were getting at...

That was part of it, so at least when adjusting you know that TDC is correct. But did you use the timing light on both sets of pick-ups to see if they both had the same amount of degrees when firing? Or is there a slight difference/ split in the set up from the Factory. Just would be both interesting to know and is always worth checking.

when I used the timing light I set it to 0 degrees advance and got the F mark on the 1+4, for 2+3 there is no F mark, this is why I asked, I didn't know you could turn the advance up and get it to light on T, I have never used one of these before. Holy run on sentence!

Well you'll figure it out, pretty simple. I just wondered if you had tried it yet, and if you found the Factory mounting of the pick-up coils to be off.
Continue on, and we shall wait for some results when you get them.