Stuttering above 3000

After the compression check and plug inspection I put the sparkies back in and attached the timing light.

A new timing light, from Sears provided some interesting configuration challenges. The light is 12V, Legs is 6V. Keith was borrowing the Audi to get an alternator for his Mazda, so he graciously lent me his 12V battery out of his car to run the timing light.

You have to hook the light to the battery, then ground the 12V battery to the car(!), then put on the induction clamp. I guess the induction clamp needs the common ground loop back to the light. I didn't try running w/o it. A coil of 18g wire from the travel box did the job. I grounded it by laying the bare wire against the 3rd piece, nominally held in place by a loop around the genertor clamp. If it hadn't worked, I would have used an alligator clip or tape. But it did.

Timing was static at 5 BTDC on the Bosch 050 distributor. On the pulley, a 1.5" mark is supposed to be 30 degrees advance. This per the Distributors section of " The Maestro's Little Spec Book". From what I could see, I was on that mark, but at 3k rpms it was jumping around a lot as the engine stuttered. Of course, there was no causal information therein: was the stuttering engine causing the timing mark to jump around under the light as the motor changed speeds dramatically and momentarily, or was the timing causing the engine to stutter as the advance went all wacky for a moment or three.