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]

I know what you are saying. All I'm saying is that I want to set my distributor at 0, I know I don't need to, I want to.

Then just set 10 deg of timing on every load cell in your map, set that delay to zero, and use a timing light to manually adjust the distributor until it reads 10 deg with a timing light. Then your distributor will be at 0. The 10 deg you'll see with the timing light is just what is being added by the ecu to that initial value.

I don't think there is a way of setting it without the engine running or without a timing light.

[match220]

Then just set 10 deg of timing on every load cell in your map, set that delay to zero, and use a timing light to manually adjust the distributor until it reads 10 deg with a timing light. Then your distributor will be at 0. The 10 deg you'll see with the timing light is just what is being added by the ecu to that initial value.

I don't think there is a way of setting it without the engine running or without a timing light.

yeah, that is the problem that I said in one of the first posts. It is a distributorless setup with the coils directly on the plug, so I have to be creative to use a timing light. The only thing I'm using the distributor for is the pickup inside it. I'm going to run a spark plug wire from coil 1 to the spark plug and put the timing light on that. Thanks for all of your input.