I’ve spent £300 and ruined my bus….Please Help

I did, yes - I bought the Flame Thrower 3 coil too.

 

Didn't want to nag, but it wouldn't be my first choice. Stick it on eBay?

A 123 is completely painless.

 

Yes - 100% bought the correct one - vac advance in mine.

 

Thanks all,

Really appreciate the advice and apologies for the delayed response - was actually away camping in the T2.

Whilst at the campsite, I revisited timing again and by basically ignoring the timing light and setting it when it “sounded right” seems to have made it much more drivable. No backfires and running smoothly…Fingers crossed. Old stuff going back in, if this doesn’t work!

Cheers.

 

Sounds promising however I would check your maximum centrifugal advance, much more than 30 btdc and you are running the risk of engine damage.

 

you do have the timing gun set for 4 cylinders?

 

I would check your timing marks - start by finding TDC with a pencil down No1 (or No3) cylinder , with the No1 valve rockers both rocking . Whatever is straight up is 0 degrees. The 7.5 degrees mark is about 12 mm to the right of that, so the 0 degrees marker is to the left when No1 fires, and 7.5 is lined up with the case joint .
If you have a fancy timing light with an adjustable advance dial, check it against a boring simple timing light. Mine with adjustment failed and I was lucky I bought another basic light to check.. even if the Friendly Local Auto parts Store charged me £59 for it. I managed not to wince.


People have destroyed engines "timing by ear" they go a LOT better when advanced too much, and then the pistons spray molten aluminium all over the spark plugs. Then a piston melts.

 

Sound advice. Thanks. Old points and coil back in this morning and it is running like a dream again… If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!

lesson learnt!

 

It's not just you.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771274&sid=e2d9dab7eb11a73a53fc8fb572c9dc8e

 

Everything about those units seems slightly crazy.

 

I think its their attempt to replace the magnet wheel with Hall sensor in a basic Pertronix with a VR sensor or similar picking up off the 4 cam lobes of the distributor . So it gets only 4 timing edges per engine rotation. (One as the lobe appears one as it disappears).

A basic pertronix just fires the coil as each magnet whizzes past.. no software involved..


If your idle is at all uneven is likely that any speed tracking software gets confused by the speed variations and ends up amplifying the instability.

If your engine has a cam that makes it idle unevenly but rev like crazy, this unit probably smooths out high speeds at the expense of even lumpier idle but you dont care because your car sounds meaner..

Proper 19 +1 wheels give the engine 10 pulses of leadup to each firing event, so the firmware can filter and predict much more accurately at low rpm.