Daytona Distributor Dwell

I have a Euro Daytona which should be running 3 lobe dual point distributors. When I opened it up to set the points and clean the advance mechanism I found out that someone had evidently been there before me and that I had 6 lobe distributors running on a single set of points. I presume these are USA type Daytona distributors with the retard points removed.

The workshop (Angelo Wallace) manual calls for a point gap of 0.35mm or 0.014" and also a dwell of 50 degrees which seems very large. When I set my points to the correct gap the dwell I measure (light and protractor method) is closer to 30 degrees. I was wondering since the manual is written for the Euro Daytona running the 3 lobe distributor with dual points that maybe they were referring to each single point being closed for 50 deg duration. Hence, when correctly set on a 6 lobe single point configuration I should be looking for a 25 deg dwell.

Or am I all wet?

I'm going to post this on the Daytona site as well for Bill Badusrki, who has my distributors currently to rework the advance curve, but thought it would make interesting discussion here.

Drew

 

I suppose I could switch over to an optical system triggering MSD boxes but as long as the points are maintained and adjusted periodically, which I don't mind doing, I feel comfortable with staying with them. I do like Ian's idea about hiding the boxes under the dash since the Euro cars never had them to begin with.

The real reason I pulled the distributors was because upon inspection the 7-12 side distributor mechanical advance seemed a little "loose" to me when compared with the 1-6 side. So I sent it off to Bill Badurski to recurve and match them to factory spec.

By the way, the fuel these days is in some ways much better than years ago. The biggest downside is lower octane and ethanol which has an affinity for water. As long as the car does not require additional octane and you do not make the advance curve more aggressive than factory spec you are OK. The plus side is that the clean air act of 1990 and subsequent ammendments requires all gasolines to contain port fuel injection detergent (PFID) and intake valve detergent (IVD) to keep the system clean. Plus the climatization of fuels (high vapor pressure during the winter vs. summer and several intermediates steps) is now more highly regulated.

Its mainly the octane and ethanol/oxygenate requirement in certain areas we are all complaining about.