timing the flat head

first i need to thank everyone so far for there help with my work on my friends old 53 flatty. now i need to know how to set the timing, ill be changing the plugs, points, condenser, cap, rotor and wires. also the old willys has motorcraft A7 plugs in it now, and runs good, what plugs does everyone else run. the shop is showing me some autolites.

 

again, thanks. ill find my manual after im done with the jeep. im still looking for the link for the dash decals, the ones that say high/low/ 4 wheel drive 2 wheel drive, and show the transmission shift pattern, swore there was a link on this site to buy them.

 

well ive been looking all over the front of the engine and i cant find any timing pointer anywhere on this little flat head. it starts right up and runs great but it would be nice to set the timing.

 

Timing marks on the CJ2A's are on the flywheel, viewed thru a little "window" in the block plate below the starter. I think that by '53 they "should" be up front, but you may have an older engine. The "window" has a cover over it that swings aside. Good luk. BW

 

thanks, ill check there tomorrow.

 

If you have the F head, which would seem appropriate for '53, the timing marks are on the timing gear cover (for early F 134's) and then a pointer was added for later year models. See the marks and pointer shown in the scanned diagram pictures in an early post in this thread. I was just cleaning mine up for reassembly and painting today. Good luck.

 

I haven't had a (working) timing light in years. I used to try and set everything by the book, but after a lot of experimenting I found I could get things to run a lot better if I just set the timing by ear. Well, by ear and then a test drive. I don't know if it's just my altitude or what, but for whatever reason the factory settings never seemed to work right for me. YMMV of course. A vacuum gauge is a definite must have for tuning an older engine too.

 

ill try the vacuum gauge. i just needed to know where the marks were so i can check them, see how far, if they are, off.

 

I put in new points and have a question.

I have two books that list the point gap at .020"

I have a third (chiltons) that lists the dwell at 25 to 35 deg.

With the gap at .020", my dwell is about 45 degrees. I attempted to get it down to 25-35 degrees... I opened the gap up to about .040" (working in .005" increments) and that netted me about 37 degrees dwell. This just doesn't seem right. I can't imagine that the static/book gap spec would be that far off. I didn't bother to go any further, since I think the spec is wrong....and I didn't have a thicker feeler gauge anyway.

Anyone know what the dwell reading should be? Is the dwell the same thing as "cam angle"? I see that listed above at 42 degrees.

My application is a 47 CJ-2a L134... I'm not sure if my distributor is stock or not.

I believe I have the large rotor "IAD" distributor.

And one other thing I learned. If you think you set the dwell wrong (cause the motor won't start anymore) you might check to see if the rotor is still laying on the fender before you readjust the points again. R)

 

thanks for the reply. its a long ago done deal. the flatty belongs to a friend and its running great.

 

Keep an open mind to "factory timing" degrees. If someone misaligned the oil pump at one time, it may have a "sweet spot" no where near the mark. I cant remember but I think mine is optimized about 7 or 11 deg off spec and ran it. found out later about the pump gears.

 

on the dwell question, are you running 6 volt or 12 volt? i dont know that would change the reading,but it may

 

it was converted to 12 volt. i know what you mean about factory timing. the factory has to have somewhere to set the timing. i had an old vw that the timing had to set by ear. set it a factory and it wouldn't even run, or hardly run. set it by ear and it ran great.

 

I'm running a 12 volt battery and coil, with a ballast resistor. My understanding is that dwell is the measurement of "how long" the points are in contact... I guess a little more voltage could cause it to arc a touch sooner than it would otherwise and that would show a longer dwell??? I dunno, not much potential there at 12volts even.

 

6 or 12 doesn't matter on the dwell (I run 12). dwell needs to be dead on. I had an incident where the Jeep backfired repeatedly and died a miserable "i'm now stranded" death on the road. I thought I had a serious valve issue. Points looked fine to the eye. A friend advised to swap it anyways as any booger or out of gap range could be the issue. He was right -- cured it.

Kinda like my "good to the eye" sparkplug at Tellico

 

Okay.. so any thoughts on what the dwell should be set at? Is 25-35 degrees the standard and most common number? Or is that "cam angle: 42 degrees" the dwell I should be going for?