Digital timing light

[72tutone]

Please feel free to move this if need be.

I bought an innova 3568 digital timing advance light.http://innova.com/en-US/Product/Detail/3568
I'm having difficulty understanding these new lights with advance. Ive used an old sears timing light till it died on me by hooking up light, advance or retard disti by looking at the timing light and seeing the degrees on the tape.
What is the point of the advanced/retard feature on these timing lights? They dont seem to do anything different than what I'm doing manually.
I even called the manufacturer and they just told me that the number showing is the same as adjusting it manually? He stated that some customers just like seeing a number on the display???? Surely that cant be right?
This isnt a dial back timing light if I read correctly.

Has anyone used this timing light? OR can someone shed some light on how they work? It just seems the buttons are redundant as far as adjusting timing and just looking at the tape on the balancer to determine what degree your at.

[Alex V.]

I've never used one, but the only way I see it making sense is this:

You want 8* BTDC - adjust the thingamajig on the timing light to 8, adjust the distributor to 0, and it's at 8 degrees.

It does seem redundant on something that has multiple marks on the timing pointer or a timing tape, but could be useful on engine without a tape to measure or set the timing (for example, full advance timing at 3,000 RPM) to a point greater than the 12-16* that a pointer usually reads.

[72tutone]

Thanks Alex.
That makes a bit of sense. Except if you have your balancer tape at 8 degrees and you set the light to 8 and then move the disti so the balancer goes back to 0, what did I accomplish? The balancer was already at 8 degrees.

LOL why does this seem so complicated?

[DBK81]

Digital advance just avoids having 10-20-30 markings on flywheel, just adjust to what you want your advance to be on the timing light then adjust distributer to the tdc mark. Or turn digital advance to 0 and use it like any other timing light.

[davepl]

So the point is that your balancer likely isn't marked all the way around, and your timing tab maybe has 16 degrees on it, so how would you measure total timing at 34, for example?

That's what the dial-back part is for. You dial the knob back until the timing mark reads 0 on the timing tab and then see what the gun says. At full timing, let's say, at 3000 rpm the gun will say something like 34.

Put another way, there are two ways to read 8 degrees: set the gun to zero and the tab points to 8. Or set the gun to 8 and the tab points to 0.

Since you don't have a tab at 34, there's only one way to do it - dial back.

You could, of course, also have a timing tape all the way around your balancer and then wouldn't need a dial back light.

For idle stuff you may never wind up using the dial. Just leave it at 0 for that.

[72tutone]

Well, the whole reason behind the digital display for me is I do have timing tape on my balancer. I wanted to make sure I had the timing marks right on the balancer as Im questioning myself as to whether or not I put the tape on right.
So that is why I bought the one with the timing display.

[DBK81]

Originally Posted by 72tutone

Well, the whole reason behind the digital display for me is I do have timing tape on my balancer. I wanted to make sure I had the timing marks right on the balancer as Im questioning myself as to whether or not I put the tape on right.
So that is why I bought the one with the timing display.

That's not going to help you, if top dead centre on #1 (which is what we call 0) isn't marked correct then you'll never have the proper reading, you have to find TDS to have a starting point to work from. You can't point the gun at an unmarked or improperly marked flywheel and have a digital readout just tell you the timing, it doesn't work that way.

[RichardJ]

I have had that same light for about ten years. As the others have mentioned, it is a dial-back and can still be used as a regular light. And as DBK81 said, you have to correctly locate TDC before you use any light.

The tachometer feature is very handy. Once you set the timing, you're looking right at the rpm and can reset the idle speed right then.

Unless they have changed it, the detachable cable ISN'T a good feature like they seem to think it is. It falls off way too easily.