Bought a cheap $40 timing light and it lied to me for 2 weeks

Swapped out a distributor on my buddy's 86 F150 last month. Set the timing by ear since my old light finally died. It ran rough but I figured it was the carb. Borrowed a Snap-On from the shop down the road, turns out I had it 8 degrees off. The cheap light I grabbed off Amazon had a bad inductive clamp, was picking up signal from the wrong wire. Lesson learned, my $40 saved me $40 but cost me a weekend. Anyone else had a cheap tool give you bad data that sent you chasing ghosts?

1 comments

1 Comment

carr.abby16d ago

Honestly the clamp hooking the wrong wire is user error more than the tool...