Thanks guys,
The resistors are made like a standard electronics wire wound resistor, i.e., they are potted in a ceramic. If you look inside the coil form and around the base of the leads you can still see some of the material that didn’t flake off. I've never seen a wire wound resistor that was bare, too much of a chance of it shorting. They typically are used where a lot of heat is to be dissipated, as in the heater switch where the resistor is dissipating roughly 15w. The reason these get so hot is that they are sized just big enough to handle the load and not any bigger. You could replace the resistor with a standard modern day power resistor rated at .5 ohms 15w but it would be a larger resistor and not get all that hot.
Don’t know how the potting is going to hold up Stu, got any suggestions? This is all an experiment so time will tell. Like I said, I couldn’t fire this resistor after potting it with the slurry, and I couldn’t find the coil forms to make new ones, and in fact couldn’t find the proper eyelets for this application either. I can’t get hold of Stimpson by phone and they won’t return my emails. They have the market cornered when it comes to eyelets. Luckily I have a small supply of eyelets still in my inventory that covers most of my repairs but they are running thin and none that would work in these switches.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Wait till ya see what I been doin’ with the original light switches.
