Adjusting dwell 1955 324
#1
Adjusting dwell 1955 324
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.
#4
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.
#6
#7
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.
#8
Points gap was wrong
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!!
#11
#13
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.
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.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post