The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay 1946 Chevy 1/2Ton - Ballast Resistor

1959 3600 235 SM420

I also have ended up with a brand new ballast resistor outputting only 5.6V. I was converting my system back to an external resistor: new coil, new ballast resistor on the firewall, new connections.

Battery voltage 12.6, input voltage to the resistor 12.4V (from the key), output from the resistor 5.6V. Ohms across the resistor was 1.5 (actually 1.8 ohms if you test it for a couple seconds).

This resistor came from one of the big classic parts suppliers (I don't recall if it was Chevys of the 40's or Jim Carter or whomever, I get parts from all of them), so will see what's at NAPA on Monday.

Wouldn't Ohms and output voltage be correlated? Sub target voltage should mean that Ohms are abnormally high, but I though 1.5 was the ideal resistance?