Ballast resitor

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AJ71DUSTER

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Ok still have trouble with my car not running longer than ten miles. so call the help line for Mallory Ing this what hey told me, I should not have the ballast Resitor hook up becasue this what is causing the ingition to shut off due to the resistor causing to much resitance. i tried to tell them that i a have this set up for over a year and had no problem.
if anybody has info on how to corret please let me know

cars getting fuel
New 6AL box
New pro master coil
new distbiture mallory duel point
New condensor today

The car will start up after about 2hrs of down time.
 
are using a jumper to connect the wires that go to the ballast?
 
thanks i will do that, i will have to wait for awhile to see if it work just got the car home and it die again.thanks again
 
ok got the car started with jumper on, (no ballast),started up with a hard miss, check the timing marks to make sure it was not jumping (steady as a rock,) car was run for about 15 mins still had the hard miss,but i noticed that with the light still on #1 it would go off then on then off after about 10 sec, check #3 cylinder looked normal.change wires around at cap and plugs still the light would go and on like before,still had hard miss,check other cylinders and they would do the same as #1 was doing,on and off. no pulsate like there was no current in the wires at all,then like clock work the engine started to die,it was like each cylinder was losing current from the distributor, check the coil wire to ground no spark. now this is with the jumper wire,the hard miss is new never had after cool down with ballast hooked up,this is nuts to me i feel that I'm some what educated on my car but this is driving me nuts, thanks for any help even if you tell me to stand on one foot and dance a jig i would try it.
 
"if you tell me to stand on one foot and dance a jig i would try it."
Your going to look silly doing it, but have fun. lol
If you have another coil give it a try.
 
harryhood said:
you should not have the ballast with a msd box.
Click to expand...
why should you bypass the ballast? the msd power wire goes directly to positive on mine i used the hot wire to the oem box for the smaller red wire on the msd .mine starts instantly and runs great. just curious
 
I don't have a techie answer for you, all I know is that I've read on the msd forums that you should disconnect the ballast. So that is what I do.
 
Sorry for not replying sooner,I was a vacation, i had the Ballast wired in with the Mallary sent up for over a year, before i left i sent the coil back for a replacement and it was on the porch when i got home this afternoon so i will put it on tomorrow and see if it takes care of my probem. i will post the results!
 
The ballast resistor is there to limit current flow through the coil so it won't over heat and die. When using an MSD box the ballast is no longer hooked to the coil. MSD instructions have you hook the wire from the ballast to the small red wire from the MSD that turns the MSD boc on and off. Having the Ballast there or not doesn't make a difference to how the MSD works (either there is enough voltage to turn it on or there isn't) but it's not needed and is just one more place for somthing to fail so I would bypass it as you did.

You indicate you are using a point distributor to trigger the MSD and that is fine. The condensor in the distributor is there to prevent arcing across the points as they open when the relatively high current from the coil to ground is flowing. In your application the current flow is very low and there is no arcing danger so the condensor is not required. That is just another place where something could fail and cause issues. I would recomend that you remove the condensor.

Sounds like you have two issues going on. I would suspect that you have a temeprature related high voltage break down in the coil that is causing the engine to die. Since the miss fire stays with cylinder #1 as you swap wires around I would check the plug and look at the inside of the cap for signs of tracking. But with the engining slowly dieing having a plug fowl is not out of the question.

If it doesn't turn out to be a cap or plug issue don't discount something mechanical with the bad cylinder. Bad lifter, bent push rod, broken valve spring, etc.
 
The ballast resistor is there to limit current flow through the coil so it won't over heat and die. When using an MSD box the ballast is no longer hooked to the coil. MSD instructions have you hook the wire from the ballast to the small red wire from the MSD that turns the MSD boc on and off. Having the Ballast there or not doesn't make a difference to how the MSD works (either there is enough voltage to turn it on or there isn't) but it's not needed and is just one more place for somthing to fail so I would bypass it as you did.

You indicate you are using a point distributor to trigger the MSD and that is fine. The condensor in the distributor is there to prevent arcing across the points as they open when the relatively high current from the coil to ground is flowing. In your application the current flow is very low and there is no arcing danger so the condensor is not required. That is just another place where something could fail and cause issues. I would recomend that you remove the condensor.

Sounds like you have two issues going on. I would suspect that you have a temeprature related high voltage break down in the coil that is causing the engine to die. Since the miss fire stays with cylinder #1 as you swap wires around I would check the plug and look at the inside of the cap for signs of tracking. But with the engining slowly dieing having a plug fowl is not out of the question.

If it doesn't turn out to be a cap or plug issue don't discount something mechanical with the bad cylinder. Bad lifter, bent push rod, broken valve spring, etc.
 
I did change out the condensor, to be honest that was the first thing i changed, the lack of spark or fire goes from wire to wire i thought it was only on #1 plug but travels from cylinder to cylinder sorry if i miss led, now what you said about the high temp
failure does make sense, i will check the cap. i have a new. i was going to put on the 3rd coil today but ran out of time,1 was older and this will be my second new coil still same problem.So if this new coil does not solve my problem i think i can rule out the coil,i know that the dual point Mallory is a simple/effective but is there anything that could go wrong to cause this failure?
 
Ok I put the new coil and cap on, ran the the car up to 2000rpms put a big shop fan in front of the car so that it would not over heat. 92 today, ran for about 20mins start to miss a little grabbed the timing lite found intermiting fire on spark plug 1, check #3 same thing, all of spark plug wires leading to the spark plugs had intermitting fire.turn the car off missing real bad, pulled the coil wire from the cap check for spark, found that it also had intermitting spark,waited 5 mins check again no spark from the coil wire to the cap. still no luck, but it looks real pretty sitting in my barn (LOL).What I did find while the engine was warming up, i check the voltage at the jumper wire for the ballast. found I had 13 volts in and out, check the lead to the battery and it also had 13 volts now is this to much? could this be causing my problem?the car was at a 2000rpm when I checked. thanks for any ideas because I,m out IDEAS..
 
First a proper functioning charging system should have your voltage at 13.8 to 14.1 volts. Nominal voltage on a fully charged battery is 12.8 volts. You said 13 but if it's 13.0 then that is low but would not be the reason for your misfire.

What are saying is starting to point at the MSD box. I missed that you were using a dual point distributor. I don't know how two sets of points would effect the MSD but I would be inclined to remove one st of points. It's not going to do anything positive and it may be impacting the MSD.
 
harryhood said:
I don't have a techie answer for you, all I know is that I've read on the msd forums that you should disconnect the ballast. So that is what I do.
Click to expand...



I have run msd in three different cars over the years and have used a ballast on every one of them and never had a problem
 
Ok gents your going to like this one just for sh@#%^&ts and giggles i put the old distributer back in and guess what the damn thing ran never started to lose fire to any of the plugs still had a miss but i figured that by now I've killed a couple of plugs, But the million dollar question is what the heck is wrong with the brand new dual point that i bought?
 
Did you take the condensors out like I had suggested? Something is breaking down and shorting to ground so the MSD is not getting a triger signal.

I guess my question is why in the world did you buy a new dual point distributor when you were planning to use an MSD box? Could have gotten a new Mopar Perfromance distributor for $100 less or a electronic Mallory unit for the same price.

Like I recomended in my previous post I would just remove one set of points, it's not needed with the MSD and may be causing issues.
 
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