What should the ignition timing be set to? I'm talking about the degrees before or after TDC. My brother has a 1910 with an added tooth wheel for an added starter. We marked TDC with white paint, then checked timing fully retarded and fully advanced. We checked it two ways, with the motor off and simply rotating the toothed wheel (attached to the crankshaft of course) until we heard the coils buz. Then we did it with the engine running and using a timing light. We got different answer for static (engine off) and dynamic (engine running). I believe that is expected. I plan to text my 1909 tomorrow for static measurements. I don't have a tooth wheel but I do know where the hand crank is when it is TDC. Then I can turn the crank until the buzzing starts and measure the angle between TDC and where the buzzing started. I couldn't find any mention of degrees or distances around the flywheel related to when the spark should happen. So any info you may have, documented or just what you've observed, would be appreciate.
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Hey Dave,
Do you have Harold Sharon's book? Really helpful. Also, Dykes explains it, I'm just not sure I understand it. (Old cars for dummies?)
My 40hp 1910 Chalmers is set between10-15 degrees past top dead center for safe crank starting. I chose that as it seems to work best for my other early stem winders. As long as your setting is a bit past TDC the chances of a kick back are greatly reduced but too retarded and starting may be difficult so you may have to play with it a bit since, as far as I know, we don't have the factory specifications. Hope that helps.