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Testing Idle Speed with Dwell Meter 200 1980

I have a 1980 242 DL non-turbo w/B21F engine and 270k miles. I tried to check the idle mixture per Bentley Manual recommendation of hooking up a dwell meter to the red pigtail in the left fender. I could not get any reading whatsoever. What's wrong? Is there another way of doing a shade-tree mechanic evaluation of the idle mixture (I don't have access to a CO tester)?








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    Testing Idle Speed with Dwell Meter 200 1980

    I have the LH-2.0 engine from 1983,84. So my answer may not
    agree with your engine.

    The dwell meter check described in the my Bentley manual puts
    the positive lead of the meter on the pink-white wire of the
    test connector, and the negative meter connection on ground.

    I recall ohming out the pink-white wire, and it was connected
    to the oxygen sensor.

    The output resistance of the oxygen sensor is very
    high, and you need to measure it with a voltmeter
    that has at least 1 MOhm/volt resistance. The
    resistance of most cheap dwell meters are nowhere
    near that high. Thus the dwell meter loads down
    your signal and you get meaningless readings. If
    you have access to a digital dwell meter you may
    get better results with it. (I do not have one,
    so I have not tried that yet)

    I adjust the CO2 plug on my car by putting a digital
    voltmeter on the oxygen sensor, and adjusting it so
    that the voltage is always low, and then counting the
    turns till it is always high. Then I reset half way
    between the two positions. Then I check to make sure
    the oxygen sensor spends half its time high and low.

    One of these days I would like to build the LED sensor
    described in the Bentley manual. I just wish I had a
    clear schematic for it.


    Donald E Booth
    1984 245DL B23F engine, M46 transmission, 238,000 miles








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      Testing Idle Speed with Dwell Meter 200 1980

      The 2.0 is a bit different than the 2.2 regarding that test point on the pink wire. The LED tool as described for LH2.2 won't work directly with your LH2.0 ECU. The way you did it is fine, but you'd probably prefer to see the blinking LED over the flashing numbers to get the duty cycle even, and dwell meters don't actually measure dwell at this low rate, equivalent to maybe 30 rpm.

      You can add a buffer transistor to the LED tool to use on the LH2.0 test point. It is not really the O2 sensor directly, but after the ECU's comparator cleans up the sensor's output. But its logic level is low impedance, (NMOS output through a resistor) it is not low enough to operate the LED directly. A general purpose NPN switch transistor, e.g. 2N3904, wired emitter to ground, base to the pink test point, collector to LED and current limiting resistor to +12.

      But I think your method of finding the center point is plenty accurate for mixture.

      The K-jet test point is not the lambda output directly, or even its comparator output, it is a pulse-width modulated voltage used to develop the "frequency valve" output, similar to a pulsed injector controlling fuel flow. The rate is well within the range a standard ignition dwell meter can accurately measure. So the dwell meter is a good tool to read the duty cycle of this signal.








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    Testing Idle Speed with Dwell Meter 200 1980

    There should be some signal coming from that red connector. You are sure the dwell meter is hooked up clean and grounded?
    If there is nothing coming from this wire - I guess the wire could be shorted or there is a problem with the LambdaSOnd relay or ECU (I cant remember which one it goes directly to)
    With the dwell meter hooked up this way, O2 sensor must be connected to see fluctuations (rich/lean).

    NOAH
    1980 245








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    Testing Idle Speed with Dwell Meter 200 1980

    I can't explain the problem with the dwell meter but a voltmeter should read the average of the pulses. That is a 50% duty cycle should read about half of battery voltage with engine runing. This really isn't related to idle speed, just fuel air mixture. The system should run at a fixed 50% duty cycle with the O2 sensor unpluged.







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