Originally Posted By TRENDZ
O.K. I'll take another shot at this grin
Lets say that when the reluctor is lined up with the pick up, a spark shoots out of the coil.(it may happen on the rising edge or falling edge, but lets make this easy)

When the distributor is at rest, and the pick up and reluctor are lined up with each other, the rotor is aimed dead center at the cap terminal.
I have the distributor here and I see this as true. YES

Now lets add 10 (distributor)degrees of mechanical advance.

This seems to be where everyone starts to disagree.

The way I see it: The coil will only fire when the reluctor and pick up are aligned. CORRECT

The way some see it: The rotor is 10 degrees ahead of a cap terminal when the spark occurs. IT WONT BE,IT'LL STILL BE DEAD EVEN

Since a spark only occurs when the reluctor and pick up align, how can this be? SEE ABOVE

How is the spark triggered if the reluctor is not in line with the pick up? IT IS NOT, SPARK TRIGGERED ONLY WHEN TOOTH IS LINED UP WITH MAGNET
Trendz would you take 3 minutes & do the dist test in your hand. You will see the "magic", how the last three statements will take place even tho it makes no sense. Just now I went into the kitchen & tried it again (just to keep my sanity!). EDIT Keep in mind, you are checking rotor position at idle/no advance so to speak in your kitchen with a tooth lined up with the magnet then you are moving the tooth a bit CCW then twisting the reluctor back CW so it will fire earlier (the mech adv) which is what would happen when running & the mech adv is advancing it and at that point when it fires (earlier) the tooth is lined up with the magnet and the rotor is back to its original position. MORE EDIT as the tooth/rotor come around CW the mech adv twists the reluctor/rotor even further CW so it reaches the magnet sooner (& it fires) & when the tooth reaches the magnet sooner the rotor will be in the same spot on the cap as it was before the mech adv bumped it forward. that is the "trick", that when the tooth (earlier) reaches the immobile magnet the rotor will always be in the same position.

Last edited by RapidRobert; 03/19/16 10:08 PM.
live every 24 hour block of time like it's your last day on earth