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Hello all,
I recently got one of those sears multi-tach-dwell meters and I'm in the process of spring tuning, but for all my googling I haven't found the answer to this, so I'm hoping someone here can help.
I have a four cylinder Honda 750, so when buying the meter I thought, 'hey, it's got a 4 cyl setting, should be fine.' The dwell settings are okay (not really, but the manual lists the correct angle for each setting), but reading RPMs, I'm not so sure (possibly reading twice the actual RPMs?), and the manual is silent on this point.
This bike has a "wasted spark" ignition system, and each coil fires two cylinders. So with the meter hooked up to one coil, and on the four cylinder setting, what are the actual RPMs?
Is it really as simple as 2x the reading=RPMs? Or is the 4 cyl reading right and my onboard tach way off? What's the deal here? And what is the electronic tachometer actually reading?
Thanks.

I'm pretty sure that it will read twice the RPM because the plug is firing twice, once on the compression stroke and once on the exhaust stroke. Does it read twice what your tach says. If your bike has electronic ignition you won't be needing a dwell meter. They are used to set the points or contact breakers on old style engines.

Set it to two stroke 4 cyl and see what happens. It will be reading twice the rpm you are getting because your bike will fire 2 cyls on every stroke, but only one will be on compression. If you set it to 2 stroke the machine takes care of it. Otherwise just halve your readings and carry on.

Thanks much for the quick replies-- motorcycle questions answered while you sleep!
Unfortunately my meter doesn't have a two stroke setting. It's one of those does everything meters that doesn't have a lot of functions for any one thing. Looks like halving the reading is the way to go.
On the dwell, this is an old style engine with points. Setting the dwell vs. static gapping seemed to make a big difference. Much quicker and easier. I can screw things up in half the time.