ballast resistor question

There's been a few times, in my life, LOL

I can still remember one late evening getting dark. My buddy, who I had "let in one ear and out the other," had bought a chrome Holley mechanical pump for his Chevy, and the damn thing had lasted about a week and broke, and I had put one on my 426 '64 Dodge. And IT failed -- and just about the same amount of time, too!!!

Fortunately, I still had the still working old one in the trunk. So here I am, in San Diego, on the side of highway 15, with a flashlight in my teeth, and I'm putting the old pump back on. A CHP came by and wanted to know "whut" and when he decided that "it looked like I knew what I was doing" and that I would be off and running in a few minutes, he got in his car and left me alone!!!!

One time that dammed -6 440 blew the O ring out of an oil pump!!!! I stopped and bought some more oil and dumped a whole bunch, and piddled oil clear down to the dealer!!! They had an "O ring" kit for the pump and I pulled the pump off right there in the parking lot, tore it apart and replaced the O rings!!! To this day I have no idea why they failed.

One labor day weekend I wasn't doing much at Miramar and my buddy was out to sea. I broke the dammed 3-4 shift fork late Friday night and had a whole 3 day weekend!!!! with only first and second gear!!! to drive all over San Diego!!! THAT was no fun!!!!

(That thing had a 3.54 gear and ran 3K at 70 in 4th, so I guess an 18 spline would be 1.93? second? So that means 70 in 2nd would be about 6K which of course is not viable, or of course 3K in second is close to only 35 mph)