Ignition coil bench test?

You don't need the ballast resistor if only charging up the coil for an occasional spark test. The coil charges whenever coil- is held to BAT-. It only takes a few millisec to fully charge, i.e. reach a steady DC current in the primary coil, so don't hold it ON long. It is a misunderstanding that a coil outputs a certain kV. That isn't helped by stupid ads. The coil+ output voltage rises to whatever is needed to make a spark jump somewhere. It could spark thru the coil wire to gnd or even internally inside the coil. The later is likely what the kV rating means. At 1 atm (open air), the coil can easily throw a spark several inches (many feet in a vacuum chamber). Much harder at high cylinder pressures, which occurs most w/ turbo boost. That is why a Chrysler TSB for the 2.4L turbo engines said to reduce the spark gap to cure mis-fire (from ~60 mil to ~50 mil). That worked for me in my non-turbo 2.4L. It used to mis-fire bad when flooring it on a freeway ramp.