[Guest]

I have 5 wires coming from a quick disconnect post on my 72. 1 white to the oil sensor, 3 pink , and one black with yellow stripes. All of the wires recieve 12 volts except for the black wire. 1 of the pink wires goes to the + of coil. My question is...
Why is ther 2 pink wires and a black wire just sitting there doing nothing? Why did ford put these here?
Do I have a ballastor in my car? What exactly is that? Im going to be installing an ignition module so im trying to clean things up a little and figure out what these things do. Thanks.

 

[daves67ss]

I think I can give you at least a partial reply. You should have at least a wire for the water temp, oil pressure and coil + side. Typically the pink wire is a resistor wire and drops the voltage to 6V to the coil. I think some cars had a ballast resistor to drop the voltage to 6 volts for the coil. Perhaps others will give more insight.

 

[Guest]

But the voltage on that pink wire reads 12 volts. And then my coil says "12 volts" on it. ? What would happen if you did not use a Ballast resistor when using a mallory high fire and a dual point dizzy. thanks.

 

[johnpro]

What would happen? It would run great /forums/images/icons/wink.gif.

The High-fire is a 12v coil. It doesn't need the resistor wire that Ford used. Ballast Resistors are used by Mopars. I'm unaware of any pre-'80 Fords that used one, instead they used a "resistor wire". Same principle as a ballast resistor, just a different design.

 

[Axnjxn]

Couple things:

The 6V wire will read 12V if the points are open. There's no current running through the circuit, so you would pickup the battery voltage. It's a circuit thing.

Next, if you run 12V to any distributor with contact points, you will kill the points. The rate at which the points deteriorate depend on the "primary resistance" in the coil. Because you have dual points, that will also fit into the wear rate equation. Now, the "rate" I described could be as long as a year, or as short as 20 minutes (like my backup points lasted when my pertronix went out).

My guess is that you are running through the resistor wire, but the points are open.

 

[Guest]

Thank you .