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59 1/2 Ton with 235.

Bought one of the Langdon HEI Distributors and separate HEI coils, both through Jim Carter. Does the ignition resistor bottom wire (dark green) still get used and hook to the battery side of the coil along with the hot (pink) wire of the new distributor.

The new distributor has the pink wire which is supposed to go to the BATT side of the coil and a brown wire which goes to the other post. I was wondering if the resistor wire still comes into play. Thanks

You need to check the instructions. The factory HEI does not use a resister but most conversion kits do.

I will call carter and see if they have instructions. Only thing I got was a small picture of the two wires going on the coil and a note that calls for 10 gauge wire to the Battery side. I assume this will come from the ignition switch to power it up and can eliminate the resistor but not certain.

Why would any instructions call for a #10AWG wire in an ignition system? I have an aftermarket distributor with external coil and resistor (Mallory). The manuf. supplied wiring and makeup wires are not even close to a #10AWG.

that can of worms has been open here before, most claim that the hei draws enough amps to require a 10 ga wire. when i did mine i didnt really know for sure but 10 ga wire is fairly easy to come by
so why not. philip

The GM HEI coil has such a low primary winding resistance that it's necessary to use a big wire to allow it to come up to full charge on the magnetism quickly. Once the magnetic core is saturated properly, they use a combination of the inductive reactance of the coil windings and a built-in current limiter to prevent overloading of the transistor amplifier in the ignition module.
Jerry

yea yea thats what i meant to say. philip

Sounds like I do not want the OEM resistor in the mix with the HEI? Is running the 10 gauge wire from the start terminal of the on off switch (foot stomp 3 pole switch) to the BATT side of the coil and leaving out the resistor going to hurt anything. My limited understanding of the resistor is to limit during starting?

Rasman57
Before you use or lose the resistor contact the vendor or manufacturer. You may do harm to your expensive system unless you know for sure.
Hotrod Lincoln
I see the logic but with the Mallory aftermarket system the supplied wires from the manufacturer are not #10AWG. They are supplied with the unit and the user supply wires are connected to them with the supplied connector. Unless one wishes to tear into the distributor for a rewire then I see no reason to run #10 wire to the connector. Then again, my electric fan runs at about 15 amps and the supplied wires are not even close to the correct size. I'm confused.

It's possible the Mallory system is a capacitive discharge setup instead of the standard HEI. That type works completely differently, actually firing the plug 4 or 5 times in the same time frame as the one hot spark from the HEI. It's easy to spot the CD secondary voltage pattern on an oscilloscope- - - -there's actually 4 or 5 spark lines in about 5 milliseconds. I prefer HEI systems to CD, but it's necessary to have a good battery to supply the starter and the current demand of the HEI at the same time. MSD systems are a good example of the CD setup. I'm not familiar with how the Mallory works, as I stopped using Mallory distributors back in the early 1980's.
Jerry

Carter's HEI mini reqires the use of the special period correct looking external coil. However that coil says "EXTERNAL RESISTOR REQUIRED" I sent a note to Tom Langdon as he makes these up for Carter asking him if the external resistor means the OEM ballast resistor or if it is something different.

FYI. Tom Langdon sent me info on the Mini HEI and it says to NOT use the OEM ballast resistor. So I am going to leave the wires and resistor on the cowl for originality appearance and in case it is ever needed. I will run the 10 gauge wire direct to the coil as he instructed.