I suspect I may have a bad centrifugal advance in my distributor.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to how I would test the distributor on the bench for such an issue?

Hold the points plate and turn the offset at the bottom of the distributor. There should be "springy" feel as the weights are pushed out against the springs. You should be able to turn the two by the 18 or so degrees the distributor is supposed to advance. There'll be resistance, but it should be smooth and turn that whole angle. If there's any problem take off the points plate and take a look at the advance mechanism, clean/unbend as necessary, lube (sparingly) and reassemble.

Easier is to test it with a timing light in the car, revving it past 3K RPM's and seeing how many degrees it advances or doesn't.

On the bench? No at all easy. If you can find a shop that has a distributor machine and someone there who knows how to work it (the former is rare, the latter is now very rare), then they can completely check it out for you. On the car, however, you can test it with a timing light. Measure the timing at idle, at 1000rpm, at 2000rpm, at 3000rpm, at 4000rpm. This will give you a curve that should roughly match the one given for that distributor.

Again, bring it over to my house this week. We'll swap dizzies and find out once and for all. It's a 10-20 minute job.

When is good for you Mike?

QUOTE (BMartin914 @ Oct 3 2005, 04:47 PM)

When is good for you Mike?

Now is good. Tomorrow after 4:20 works great. Wednesday - bad. Thursday after 5:45 is good. Friday evening (after 4:00) looks open too.