[hubercats]

Veeder's brother here: As regards our reinventing a Sun distributor test machine, that really hasn't been our goal. Our goal was/is to build a machine that allows us to do initial setup of a newly rebuilt distributor, for example. By this I mean setting the gaps of both sets of points and determining when the points open with respect to the top-dead-center (TDC) of cylinder 1 (compression stroke). Our system rotates very slowly (about 7 RPM) by intention so we cannot assess things like points floating at high rpm, things that a Sun machine is capable of doing. However, based on our preliminary results it seems we are able to set the point gaps accurately and verify static timing. Also, as a side benefit, we can assess the "health" of the distributor lobes. So, for instance, if one of the lobes happened to be flattened, for whatever reason, it would be immediately visible in our plots. Finally, we built our prototype system for less than $100 in parts and the time that Veeder and I spent on software development and construction of the test jig. All in all, it's been a fun project for us and if our work can benefit others we're happy to share our ideas. Lastly, there's the cost of a "real" Sun distributor testing machine ... ;-)