Practically Classics Forum

I would like to get a really good picture of the health (or otherwise) of my V8. I've seen a few old Crypton tuners for not much dough on fleabay and wondered how practical they are for the amateur - anyone know?
I have a timing light, tach/dwell and a colourtune, all of which are OK, but I suspect I may have a duff cylinder or two and they aren't so easy to find when you have 8 - my old 4 cyl trick of pulling an HT lead doesn't make a lot of difference wherever I try it.

Those old Crypton type devices were for the pre digital age i.e before ECU and Cat. They were pretty good in their day at analysing everything from spark to resistance of low tension. I remember my brother having a Bosch "cabinet" in his shop the size of a welsh dresser but it quickly became obsolete and replaced by a hand held device that did everything and more that the cabinet did.
I think buying one off the bay would be akin to buying an electronic museum piece, and how would you fettle it if it went duff - maybe adding a compression tester to your stock of kit may be more actual use and relying on good quality replacement service items for the ignition system

Thanks for the reply - it kind of makes sense for the museum piece car to be tuned with contemporary gear eh? Just as I can deal with the low-tech on my old car, I can deal with low-tech electronics in the tuner. Ignition bits are long overdue actually so I really ought to start there, I have a compression tester - but it's such a paid in the backside doing 8 one at a time - I seem to recall the Crypton and the like doing a compression "guess" based on the other measurements but I could be making it up.

The first garage I ever worked in had, and was still using last month when I was there scrounging some Dolomite parts, a Sun tuning machine. As you say, the electronics are rudimentary with discrete components throughout (not an IC anywhere to be seen) and basically full of bits that are all contained on the two chips in my (pocket-sized) Sykes DMM, itself bought in 1988 (A shocking £80 from the Proto rep at the time, but I just had to have the newest gadgets back then )

That old Sun tuner had a conventional hose to take compression readings the accurate way, but that doesn't mean that the type of tester you referred to doesn't exist, it's just that I don't recall having used one.