Beginner tune up help

[deadflo]

Hey I just bought a timing light and engine "analyzer" at Sears, and will hopefully begin to use this stuff soon to tweek my 71 and 79 Z's, as well as my 82 dodge van. In looking through the manuals for these items. I noted extra instructions for the "advance timing light" which I did not buy. I just got the inductive light. Should I have bought the advance model? What benefits would this one give me? Since it is Sears I could probably take the other one back. Also, what timing setting are most folks using for their 240's? The 71 service manual has dramatically different settings for emission controlled and non emmission vehicles. My air pump and galley have been removed, but I'm wondering if that will make any difference.

[LanceM]

Probably the better light would be the one with the advance. The idea here is that instead of setting the timing at idle, what is called static timing, you set it at say 2-3K RPM, this has your full mechanical advance in, typically with full advance timing is set around 34 degrees BTDC. This way you know that you are getting full advance at rpm and don't care about the static setting. The problem of doing this with a regular lite is that your marker on the dampner is 34 degrees away from the timing marks on the cover so some messing around needs to be done to figure it out. With an advance light you dial in 34 degrees into the light and it fires 34 degrees ahead of time and so you set your timing mark to the zero mark on the cover.

To answer your second question, the best thing to do is get the advance light and set the timing to 34 degrees and forget about the static timing. If you set for 34 and you get some pinging back it off untill it goes away under hard accelration and make note of that setting for future reference.