The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Antique junk

Once in a while we come across some antique tools at a garage sale.Joy paid 40 bucks for this late 40's Sun Motor Tester.The old thing actually still works.
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That is quite some conversation piece. What exactly is a Sun Motor Tester? It looks like a bunch of multimeters benched together. Is Sun the manufacturer? Or was it for Sun service stations? Looks real neat.

Yes its made by Sun. More or less its a bunch of meters, vacuum guages a little distributer to test coils and a exhaust gas analyzer.Service garages bought them to impress the customers.The old Sun salemans' booklet that came with it, describes how to sell this unit to the garage owner by telling him this will attract more customers into the garage.Mentions using the exhaust tester to demonstrate to the car owner how his rich carb mixture is wasting fuel, talk the customer into a tuneup.The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: Tony ]

Looks awful cold where your are Tony, I suppose anyone who was freezing like an eskimo, would be inclined to buy a Sun.

I got one looks just like yours. Only thing mine still has the grease and grime on it from the garage it came from. I'd like to clean it up someday. I'm missing one roller off mine.

Actually, this brings up something you can pick up for not too much money (for the moment). The new emmisions rules have relegated an awful lot of the 4 gas analyzers that most shops used for emissions tests obsolete. A lot of shops are trying to unload them on Ebay for a fraction of their worth. Wouldn't it be nice to get an engine analyzer that can check out your fuel mixture for pennies on the dollar? Look around for one if you have the room for it.

I'll give her $50, and no charge for picking it up. Hard deal to pass up.

I have used one of those many times. The one I used had a place to mount the distributor in it. I really liked it as you could set the points,check the vacuum advance and centrifugal advance, see how much the play was in the shaft, if the lobes on the breaker were worn very much, and all of this prior to installing it in the engine. You could use it to set the voltage regulator on the generator, use the vacuum guage to set the carburetor and timing for the best engine performance, check for poor conections on battery and starters. It was a pretty good machine.

racecarldad
I have a Sun Distributor Tester like you described. In fact, I had it apart just last week. Some of the hoses for the vacuum pump had deteriorated but the pump still works fine. The base and the style is just like the unit Tony has. Below the name there is a window and a knob on either end that allows you to scroll through a list of domestic cars to find complete distributor specs. Mine shows 1960 to 1964 years only.
Interesting. I just felt a real good earth quake.

The news says 4.2 on the scale and about 20 miles west of me. And as I type this, an after shock.

[ 01-29-2002: Message edited by: Richard ]