Slappy
Well-Known Member
My Ballast on both of my cars gets extremely hot to the touch. Is this normal?
How hot should a ballast get???
- Thread starter Slappy
- Start date
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Resistance generates heat. An electric range element operates this way.
I dont know if anyone has put a thermometer on a ballast resistor and knows how hot it would get. I know it was placed where it can catch some air flow.
I saw a post in another forum once where the guy had moved it inside his truck cab. Dangling from the wires maybe. Anyway it blistered the crap out of his fingers.
I dont know if anyone has put a thermometer on a ballast resistor and knows how hot it would get. I know it was placed where it can catch some air flow.
I saw a post in another forum once where the guy had moved it inside his truck cab. Dangling from the wires maybe. Anyway it blistered the crap out of his fingers.
USMC67DART
Senior Member
I asked the same question. How hot is to hot for a ballast resister? I have cooked three of them within days. I changed back to my original coil, hoping that would help. The resister registered 164.1f degrees.
Is that the temp of the ceramic housing or the resistor itself ?
I would think the resistor gets much hotter.
justin hughes
Miss my car
i had the same problem with my car when i bought it. it stopped getting scalding hot after i changed the battery, voltage regulator, ignition control module, and plug wires. im not sure which one cured the problem for me.
We recently connected a coil and ballast resistor to a test bench power supply to see what happened. At 13v it pulled 3 amps, which is 39 watts. Low power soldering irons are rated at 40 watts, so there is a lot of heat. A running engine will have a constantly cycling current draw and will not get that hot, but it is still going to take a good bit of current to create a 20,000 volt spark. The fact that the resistor is mounted in ceramic and has a small gap for airflow on the back side means that sucker is going to get hot. Don't know how hot is too hot.
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