setting dwell

[ggenovez]

Hi all,

I'm trying to set the dwell on my 72 250 M130 transistorized ignition.

I've pulled the plugs, hooked up my dwell meter, had a helper crank,

And the lowest I can get the dwll is 54.

What am I missing? Something bad? condensor?

Thanks

[Mike D]

Make sure your tach/dwell meter is set on six cylinders.

[ggenovez]

LOL. Thanks Mike but it's right...

It starts off at 60 and as I adjust it goes down a little and goes back to 60

[pop & blow]

You did not say if you had installed new points or not if you have not then the block is worn on your old points, hard to set old points, install new points and use a feeler guage to the correct demensions, the dwell meter should then be + or - 3 degrees, then reset your timeing for static spark , by turning the distributor, old way. but the best way.

[pop & blow]

Sounds like your points are bouncing around, And it can also be a worn distributor, just saying it can be, use feeler guage to set .

[ggenovez]

feeler gauge gave me 54 degrees.

The points have less than 3K miles on them. I had set them with the guage but never verified with the meter.

Car (& distributer ) has 130K miles on it

[Arthur Dalton]

You have a worn dist shaft bushing.
Best bet is to dump the mechanical points with a Point Conversion and forget about it from there on...........your car will Thank You.

Points went out with horse shoes. Your lawn mower doesn't even have points anymore.
Probably the best Bang for the Buck performance mod you can make to that car.

[Mike D]

Listen to Arthur on this one. Go to a Crane or Pertronix. It gets rid of both the points and that Mickey Mouse transistorized ignition monstrosity.

Keeping something original don't mean squat if it won't run.

[ggenovez]

Ok. Thanks,

I'll look into it.

Are there any special instructions?


Thanks again.

[GaryF]

Originally Posted by ggenovez

feeler gauge gave me 54 degrees.

The points have less than 3K miles on them. I had set them with the guage but never verified with the meter.

Car (& distributer ) has 130K miles on it

Replacing the points with solid state is definately the way to go, just out of curiosity though, you are connecting the dwell meter to the points and not to the coil. The transistorised box will limit the dwell.

[ggenovez]

No. I'm connecting to the coil.

Where should I connect on the points?

[GaryF]

Originally Posted by ggenovez

No. I'm connecting to the coil.

Where should I connect on the points?

You need to hook onto the wire from the points, I have a different model to you so cant be specific but on mine its a green wire and goes through a terminal block before heading to the ignition box. The ignition box just looks for a state change at the points and then controls the dwell seen at the coil itself.

[ggenovez]

The green wire that goes from the distributor to the block under the battery?

[ggenovez]

Any idea what the correct pertronix part number is? my distributor # is 231-187-003

Also if the shaft bearing is bad does it not make sense to fix it so there isn't a catastrophic failure?

Thanks