Video Overview:

Now that we have swapped out the original carburetor on this 1971 Super Beetle and got it adjusted, we can make sure the timing on the 009, centrifugal advance distributor is set correctly so that the car runs as well as possible. Our tech Sam explains how the distributor advance works and why he isn't a fan of them on street driven cars. Then he goes over the process of correctly setting the distributor timing. Follow along, enjoy and maybe learn something in the process!

Video Transcript:

hi, I'm Sam with jbugs.com. Uh, now that we've got a new carburetor installed, we're going to go back and double check the timing on our double 09 centrifugal Advance distributor. Personally, not a big fan. This distributor was originally made by Volkswagen as a industrial distributor. This distributor is either on or it's off. Again, not the best thing for driving, or you want a smooth Advance, which is what you get out of a vacuum advance or a single vacuum dual Advance, where it's actually running a centrifugal Advance like the 009, but it's also running a vacuum advance, so you get that smooth Advanced curve pulled off the vacuum of the carburetor.

We've got our timing light set up with power and ground, and it's cutting getting a signal from the number one spark plug. We're going to go through, and because we're not running a degree pulley, we're going to be looking for timing marks on this stock style pulley, and ah, we got a little fan shroud rub. That's that high. I heard a high-pitched sound earlier. We've got our timing marks, which are here and here and here, so this has actually got three marks. Now, seeing as I don't know anything about this pulley, what these timing marks are at, fortunately my timing light actually has an advanced feature, so I can go through and figure out what those marks are, but I like using a digital advanced timing light because I can go through and just set my Max advance, and as long as I know what top dead center is, I know I'm getting my Max advance, a nice Mark to hopefully illustrate this much more clearly while we're running. Zero time.

So we're getting 25 degrees out of this distributor, but our initial timing is literally set at zero, so on a air-cooled engine with, you know, regardless of which distributor, uh what fuel or otherwise, you can typically get away with about 31 to 33 degrees of full advance, so I just normally will set my timing at about 32 degrees, 33, 31, 32, 33, fully Advanced. So what I'll do is actually I'm going to loosen this distributor clamp, rev this thing up, I'm going to set my timing light Advanced to 32 degrees, and then I'm going to rotate the distributor until that timing mark shows up at 32 degrees, and that will be fully Advanced to where this thing should perform a lot better, at which point we're probably going to have to go back and readjust the carburetor, but I'm going to do that right now.

I'll set the initial timing at seven degrees, so when the distributor Advance is 25 degrees more, we should get to the 32 degrees of total advance. When I rev up the engine, check the tire, I can see that we're a couple of degrees off, so I go back and set the initial time to get nine degrees, and then rev the engine up again to check the advanced timing. Now it's right on the Mark at 32 degrees. I check the idle speed, as it has increased because of the advanced timing, and I adjust it back to about 900 RPM by turning large bypass screw on the side of the carburetor.

Two end, I'll double check the advanced timing, which is still at 32, and that seems much better. We the engine seems a lot more responsive now that we've got actual proper timing set in this engine. Um, it turned out this would be static timed at about nine degrees with this distributor, and then it Advanced out to 32 degrees, so we're going to take this thing for test bin and see how she feels now.

It's not a rocket ship by any means, but it feels much, much better. Shift points on the speedometer, as far as the mile per hour, seems to match up really well. I'm pretty happy with it for being a devil and iron. She's actually really, really responsive. I can't complain one bit. Not much hesitation at all, not bad for a double 09. It's carburetor scenes to have just the right amount of Advance out of it, the distributor, now that we've got it timed properly, it just seems smooth as can be, and that's third indicator. We'll shift to Fourth. I like it. I really like it for a double or nine, even, and I'm not a big fan of devil and I. This thing drives it very, very well. That's a wrap.

In reality, this thing's ready to go, um, but again, as I mentioned, despite how really, really well this car runs right now, even with a 34 Pick 3 carburetor and a, you know, a non-vacuum advance distributor, I I'm I'm aghast at how well and how smooth this thing runs currently, but just the same, uh, it's still running a standard points and condenser ignition, and it doesn't have a vacuum, and we're gonna Swap this out. In our next video, we'll show you how to swap out from a double09 to a centrifugal Advanced distributor.