My Ballast resistor was smoking when I first installed it. Now it's doesn't smoke but it is so F-ing hot I can't touch it. Engine fires up , but is running poorly and I'm thinking this might have somthing to do with it. Talked to the old man about it and he said they run hot as hell. Doesn't seem right to me. any thoughts ?
a resistor by design makes heat, the voltage it sheds is turned to heat to be disappated to the air surounding it. as for the smoke a new one usually does this, its just burning some oil off. hopes this helps
I don't know what type of ballast resister you are running, but the type on my 59 ford has one mounting hole and slip on terminals. There seems to be two differant types. They look the same but the resistance is different. I don't remember the exact resistance, but I think one was about 1.4 ohms and the other was 2.4. The 2.4 smoked but worked. I thought it would quit after a while, but it didn't after an hour or so of driving. I put in the other one and no smoke,still working fine after several months of driving. It may depend on what your coil needs.
Why not just get an ignition coil with a internal ballast resistor? It cleans up the firewall and wiring and is way more reliable than the ceramic one- I gots em on my 66 plymouth and 51 chevy with no problems. napa part # IC64
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