setting Gen3 3sgte distributor at 0 degrees Options

[match220]

Car = Gen3 3sgte + aftermarket ECU + individual coils/distributorless setup (only using distributor for timing)

I have a question..but to get you on the same page I'll explain some things first. Today I was going over all of the final things after the rewire and making sure I've covered everything in this engine build, and it hits me that my distributor is set at the normal advance for a distributor setup, not distributorless. I don't want to use the normal mechanical advance setup because I will be running the Autronic ecu on the car and I will advance the timing in the Autronic electronically. So..I want to set the distributor at 0 degrees. If my dist is set to 10 degrees, then my settings in the ECU will start at about 2ish degrees, but I would rather set my dist to 0 so that I can start the advance at 10 or 12 or whatever the timing will come out to on the dyno on this car. For the 2nd gen 3sgte I believe the dist is allowed to move between 5°ATDC to about 20°BTDC, and I'm pretty sure that I'm using either a gen2 3s dist or a 5s one. I believe most of the dists are the same for the S family, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong. If I have to leave it like this and tune it then I will, but I would rather know my dist is set at 0 degrees so that I will know exactly what my timing advance is on my car.

So my question..
How do I go about setting my dist at 0 degrees? If I had a timing light I could, BUT there is no coil or spark plug wires to provide the other means of testing with a timing light.

Hopefully I'll post another youtube video tomorrow on the recent progress over the last few months.

This post has been edited by match220: Dec 28, 2012 - 2:55 AM

[lagos]

Here is how MS does it: http://www.megasquirtpnp.com/docs/mspnp_g2_ts9092.htm (scroll down the page).

Base timing is just a reference number to make sure whats set in the software is what is really going on. So remember that even if you set that number at 10 and your distributor at zero, thats not where your timing will be at idle. The actual timing will come from your timing map.

You need to set it like MS does it. Basically just tell the ecu to send out a fixed timing (either there is a setting for this, or you can set your ignition map to 10deg at all idle load cells) and then use a timing light to see what you are really getting on the crank pulley. The idea is just to get these two numbers to match using the delay time setting so that you will know that 15 degs in the software will really be 15 deg in the motor when you are making tuning adjustments later on.