I have an old dwell meter in my garage that I inherited from my Grandfather. Is a dwell meter of any use to a car with electronic ignition, or is it just for cars with points?
Thanks!

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"Ja, Ich fahre ein altes auto."
'78 Volare 225
'67 Charger 318

My best guess is only for points, have never tried one on electronic dist. might be fun to see what it does on an electronic dist.

Richard

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Part of Tyrde-Browne Racing

You can use it to see if your dwell stays constant with Mopar or pertronix.

or

You can see if the dwell varies with RPM and voltage with HEI.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

I have seen a dwell meter used to find a faulty Mopar ignition module. The dwell was quite low. The truck would idle fine and cruise down the road well enough, but it misfired under load and higher engine speeds.

One thing to be aware of is old electronics like this can be quite inaccurate at their advanced age. It's likely to need calibration and possibly some repair work.

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Joshua

A dwell meter will read fine on an electronic module, but it's reading won't be very useful beyond telling you there there is some switching going on; for example, I would expect MSD5, MSD6, Pertronix II and stock Mopar ignition modules to have very different readings reflecting how they work. The only thing I've found my I have found my old dwell meters useful for are for checking point seetings and when working with computer-feedback carburators; you need one to set the idle mixture in the middle of its range. I've also found that none of my tach/dwell meters agree very well or are very consistent with RPM, so I've been considering building a proper calibration reference.

I bought a new Centech digital tach/dwell/DMM from Harbor Frieght and it was a very big disappointment; it just never worked very well. It also gets very confused by waste-spark ignitions used on my Ford.