On Thu, 10 May 2018 00:01:35 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
I'd actually splash out on one designed for cars. Things like dwell and
RPM measurement. Dwell allows you to check the state of the points without
dismantling anything.

Points?, aren't they for trains to run o??.....

;-) It's a 50 year old car.

However, a dwell meter still has its uses on a modern car. All coils -
even multiple ones - will still give a dwell reading pretty similar to
points ignition. A dwell meter will also give a reading from (some)
injectors, as it measures the mark space ratio.

You might struggle to get a signal for a dwell reading from a coil on plug
system without a break out adaptor, sourciing the connectors for both genders
could be a problem too.

Plus the question is what you'd do with the reading when the dwell isn't even
specified by the manufacturer and probably won't have been for anything since
the '59 Mini went points free sometime in the 1990's

Anyone with any sense at wanting semi-reliable transport would have fitted
contactless electronic ignition to their 'classic' at least two or three decades
ago. Perhaps they prefer to **** about under their cars rather than driving
them. Other than washing and waxing every bit of maintenance on our classics
is done over less than two days per year per vehicle , that's all maintenance,
laying up for the winter, getting the MOT and recommissioning. They start on
the button every time and touch wood they have never failed at the roadside.

Not sure about more recent kit (only seen throttle angle percentage on my
generic scanner) but some pre-OBD diagnostic kit could display the injection
pulse on time it was actually commanding. But while you could measure the
actual the actual pulse at the injector it was still no guarantee the injector
actually opened and metered fuel, only removing the injectors and seeing the
spray pattern and measuring the fuel dispensed could eliminate injector
problems.

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