Ok I'm no electrical expert but a friend of mine was cleaning out his fathers stuff in storage and found this contraption. I guess it's used to test ignition coils or something. What really caught my attention was the Rotary Engine mode. I'm very surprised it was designed for such a wide range of engines. It even has a mode for 3 and 4 rotors. . Anyways, anyone here know how to use this thing?

 

That is the coolest thing I've seen onm the internet today.

My dad built a heathkit dwell/tachometer back in the 70s that I was able to use for setting dwell while bench testing a MegaSquirt. It doesn't have a rotor mode. Anyway dwell is mainly used for setting points if I'm correct, so I never bothered to really learn about it. It was useful for setting dwell in the MS tuning software though. All I did was attempt to copy what the stock J-109 ignitors were doing dwell-wise at whatever RPM. Not sure how good a job I did as this was my first venture in ECU tuning and I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Still don't (that's why I'm kinda unsure about going turbo on the 20B) but I'll get back into it after the 20B is built and installed.

So to answer your question, no I don't really know what it is for. I'm sure the old timers will know.

 

dwell meter is for setting point style ignition(point gap). also done using the feeler gauge method. guess this makes me an old timer then, huh.

 

Well I'm kinda at the transition point (pun) when cars went to electronic ignition but still had carbs. The first EFI thing I ever messed with was a 20B. Kind of a steep learning curve.