Since I have about 2 months before the roads in New York will be salt free I decided to pick up a dwell meter on eBay, gave it a test this past Friday, Car warmed up and idling at about 550rpm the dwell meter is reading 5 degrees, way out of spec, the points gap was set at .016" when I installed the new ones last season and is still at .016". Now before I go crazy here would it even run at 5 degrees of dwell? It was a brand new in the box dwell meter that had probably been sitting on the shelf for a while, maybe its defective? or does a few thousandths of points gap make that much of a difference? need to gain 25 degrees to be in spec. This is my first time fooling around with a dwell meter. I do have some slight hesitation off idle but I think that is due to a faulty accelerator pump, very poor spray pattern.

 

The dwell needs to be @30* preferably. A feeler gauge is subjective and can get you in the ball park but a dwell meter is more precise.

 

Sounds too far off as if the meter is bad. Does the meter have a cylinder adjustment scale? Are the meter and the car made to operate on the same voltage? One wire to ground the other one to the - on the coil?

 

I was kind leaning that maybe the meter is bad, it is for 12V negative ground and the main scale is for an 8 cylinder engine, there is also a scale for a six cylinder engine. One wire to ground and the other to the coil, it does also have an RPM function which seems to be accurate. One of my coworkers is going to dig through his stash for his dwell meter and i guess i can compare results.

 

Digital VOM with duty cycle capabilities can often be used to measure dwell. If you can access one look in that specific meters instructions.

 

Hmmmm.....I'd have to dwell on that.

 

As point gap increases, dwell decreases. You may have not been completely on top of the distributor lobe, the feeler gauge may have been looser than you thought, at an angle, or the points moved when the screw/s were tightened. It does not take much to change the dwell with point gap.

 

Turns out I was way over .016” almost double somehow, adjusted to .015” and now have exactly 30 degrees of dwell. Got my fat a&$ right up into the engine comp for a clean birdseye view. Now onto the accelerator pump. Thanks for the input everyone!!

 

Always check/reset the ignition timing after adjusting the dwell.

 

Make sure to reset your timing. Dwell changes effect timing, timing changes do not effect dwell.

 

^^x3^^ Always

 

I remember that terrible distributor from when I had my 54. What a PIA to get it correct. I replaced it with an external adjustment unit from a 56. Life was better then.

 

Dwell can be adjusted while cranking the engine.
With the cap and rotor removed, adjust the points watching the dwell meter while cranking the engine over.
This is how I used to do Fords and Mopars when doing tune-ups.
Much quicker and more accurate than a feeler guage.

 

X2^^^

 

I'm hoping for some decent weather this week to get the timing re-adjusted, still plenty of other things to take care of in the mean time!!