I have a cheap harbor freight timing light that seems to work. But I don't really trust their diagnostic tools any more. Is there a timing light in the roughly $100 price range that one of you might recommend? Like most things sold on the internet these days, some reviews are glowing and some are horror stories. Honorable mention if there's a self powered/battery powered one you might recommend. A lot of the reviews say that the strobe lights are too dim though.
Timing light recommendation
- Thread starter Kendall
- Start date
dllubin
Don
A cheap timing light is not necessarily inaccurate. It may not have the features of a more expensive unit but as long as it is bright enough to be useful, it is likely OK. With the advent of high power LEDs, it is pretty easy to make one - lots of descriptions on the web. A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a MAC timing light with an advance function. I have found the advance function to be very useful for measuring advance beyond idle speed. You can basically document what your advance curve looks like. I found it useful for recurving distributors. If you have a carbed X, it is pretty likely that the stock advance curve is not well optimized for performance. Also, a long duration cam can often benefit from recurving the distributor. If you just want to set static advance, it is likely your HFT light is fine as long as it can illuminate the timing mark.
Last edited:
dllubin
Don
My two 70s era Sears timing lights died within months of each other. I think it may have been the high voltage capacitor for the lamp that went bad. The LED lights are much simpler. I was going to convert one of the Sears lights to LEDs but my friend gave me the fancy MAC light (non LED) since he no longer had a need for it with his vehicles.