Ballast resistors - Who needs 'em!

This is one of those anecdotal answers: I ran a Mallory Unilite, box and coil for 10 years without a ballast and had no problems.

 

Some ballast resistors are variable resistors based upon the warming of the resistor as it heats up. so cold measurements do not telll you what the hot resistance is.

One way to tell is to see if the current through the coil varies as the ignition is on.


Ballast Resistor, 0.7-1.5 Ohm

FEATURES:

• Variable resistance of 0.7 to 1.5 Ohms
• Heavy Duty construction
• 200 watt rating
• Variable resistance improves cold weather starting

NOTES:

• A ballast resistor is needed on various ignition systems based upon the trigger style. Breaker Point, Mallory Unilite®, E-Spark, and M.B.I. distributors require a ballast resistor. The need of a ballast is NOT for the ignition coil.
• You need only ONE type of resistor for the above distributor applications. This could be a ballast resistor, OE resistance wire, internally resisted coil, or external amplifier unit (such as the Mallory Hyfire&#174
• You do NOT need a ballast when using a Mallory Hyfire® with one of the above distributor styles unless you bypass the Hyfire® unit.

OK?

tradejack

 

Good review of what's been said already.

 

Haha! I think the pony may have rigormortis!

 

One more time can't hurt.

That's pretty good info from TraderJack and pretty much sums it up (and took me four days to figure out). I figure it's better to be safe than sorry and as my coil is mounted on top of the intake, I figured I didn't need to help with the heating up.

Although it says it's to protect the module, I imagine it could still be possible that I might damage the coil.

 

I'm thoroughly confused by this post. Do I need to run a ballast resistor with a Duraspark control module?

 

Yes.

I think ford uses a resistor wire, rather than a restor block.

See the top left of the image:

 

Finally a voltage reading when running/charging.
This is how the good ol' factory smarty pants' figgered it would work best wit points. We don't want them to burn from too much current. Similar applies, as was said earlier from "many others", for the ign module.

Good thing we're traditionalists.......while we're at it anyone want to reinvent that round thing we put tires on.


Brant