The Big Ballast Resistor Video! A Simple, Yet Misunderstood Part Of Your Classic Chrysler Product

foreign hi I'm Jamie this is dead Dodge garage and this is a ballast resistor the ballast resistor is an important component in any classic Chrysler ignition system the ballast resistor is a small and seemingly insignificant part of your classic Chrysler but it's not insignificant at all you really need it and I'll tell you why if you're a veteran in the Mopar world you already know all about these dang things and this video is not going to be of any use to you this video is aimed at the newbies the guys that don't necessarily know what's going on with these things yet the guys that don't understand these classic ignition systems really I'm making this video for exactly one reason and it's not to show off the 69 charger that's just an added side benefit I'm making this video because I'm a member of many Mopar groups on the face tubes and anytime anyone has a question about a runability problem a no start what have you inevitably someone chimes in and says it's the ballast resistor if that sounded familiar to you it's because I already made a video and bombing all of this stuff and I might have said the same thing there but I really think this small very important and often overlooked part deserves its own video a quick explanation of why it is what it is and what you need to watch out for oh it's dead Dodge garage after Dark Edition spooky in the beginning there were six-fold electrical systems and they didn't need ballast resistors these coils lived happily on six volts the American automobile manufacturers switched to 12 volt systems in the 1950s but the ignition systems the basic components they're in anyway didn't really change a lot of things improved with the 12 volt system the starter is actually like turned the engines instead of just making disappointing sounds headlights were brighter things of that nature but the ignition systems the points ignition system was very happy at that six volt ish number now in the decades to come these systems would change a lot not a Chrysler Corporation but you know elsewhere in the 50s it made a lot of sense to stick with the same old points and the same old coils enter the ballast resistor the resistor's job is to lower the voltage going to the coil and keep it from exploding or boiling or doing other bad things these systems don't actually operate at six volts it's more like eight to nine volts but that does vary what this resistor does is turns excess electricity into heat and it does that to varying degrees for illustration of this concept we'll look at the only vehicle I have in the fleet with points and a ballast resistor in place my 68 Charger 383 car as I said the voltage output by the resistor varies by the load so with the coil removed there is no load we'll start by checking the voltage here on the input side which for some reason is only 11.2 volts factory wiring only the finest now let's come here to the output side with no load on it we see almost exactly the same voltage the points are currently closed with the coil reconnected the voltage on the meter is 5.7 or so a cold idle it's fluctuating between about eight and nine volts as you can see the balance resistor is a pretty interesting device the amount of resistance that it gives is based on the amount of heat and the amount of heat is based on the load for that reason if you make a silly mistake like I don't know accidentally wiring your electric choke to the output side of the resistor instead of the input side it can have strange and unpredictable results if you're curious about how the resistor fits into your ignition circuit well it's kind of like this if it isn't obvious battery power comes into the one side of the resistor and a reduced voltage comes out the other side to power your coil the voltage put out by the resistor is also affected by the voltage put into the resistor during cranking your engine's starter pulls a lot of power out of the battery reducing the voltage available for the ignition system what's normally around a nominal 12 volts is suddenly reduced to say 8 to 10 somewhere in that neighborhood that means that your resistor is trying to reduce that 8 to 10 volts to feed your coil which could result in a voltage too low to give a spark and start the engine for this reason most Vehicles equipped with a resistor for the ignition will also be equipped with a bypass system for starting on a classic Ford it's accomplished with an extra output from the starter solenoid in a classic Chrysler system this is accomplished with a special circuit coming all the way from the ignition switch called Ignition 2 with the normal primary ignition circuit being ignition one on most of these cars ignition 2 is the brown wire with the blue wire on this feed side of the resistor being ignition one as you can see on my 68 here it's tied into the coil output wire right here at the resistor on some Vehicles it actually connects to coil positive directly either way it does the same thing the existence of the ignition 2 circuit gives us a really easy way of diagnosing ballast resistor failure here's how it works if I disconnect the coil output wire from the resistor that does the exact same thing that I failed or internally broken resistor would do so with our bad resistor we're gonna get a very specific symptom the engine should start but then die as soon as the key is released [Music] just like that if that's the symptom you're experiencing with your classic Chrysler your resistor is bad or it's unplugged or you have a wiring problem but probably the resistor is bad if it doesn't fire and then die just like that it's not a failed ballast resistor it's something else if you need help figuring out what that something else is go check out my classic Chrysler ignition systems video where I detail all the diagnostic steps you need to go through while we're here I want to show you a fun limp home trick that I figured out years ago oh no my ballast resistor is bad well if you start the engine and then release the key part way but hold it in that position you still get the ignition 2 voltage to the coil you can limp at home obviously you have to be very careful not to engage the starter again or if you've got a length of wire you can do exactly the same thing by running a hot wire from your battery straight to coil positive now either of these things is going to greatly reduce the lifespan of your coil and your points so you should only do this as a very last resort you shouldn't leave it this way I use that technique once to get my Challenger home up a very Steep Hill about five blocks and everything was fine but your mileage may vary anyone who tells you you can simply bypass your ballast resistor and your classic Chrysler product with the factory ignition system is wrong dead wrong you need that conversely if you're running an aftermarket ignition system like that one you don't this is a pertronic system the pertronic system is interesting because it actually can be run with a balance resistor but they recommend that you eliminate it for best power basically in such cases you do need to run a performance coil a coil that can be run without a resistor and won't explode like this one I do like that the resistor is still here hanging out just in case you know if you are running a high performance ignition that does not require a resistor bypassing the resistor is pretty simple you can just make up a little jumper wire that plugs in the two sides of the resistor and you're good to go now it's really important at least in pre-electronic ignition vehicles that you bypass it in this way instead of just using the blue wire from this side of the resistor to power your ignition remember I mentioned that ignition 2 is a special circuit that comes off of the ignition switch well when ignition 2 is energized for starting ignition one at least in an original points vehicle isn't that means if you try to power your ignition off the factory blue wire you're going to get the opposite symptom to balance resistor failure you can turn the key and crank and crank and crank all day and it'll never start but as soon as you release the key the ignition will be powered up and often the car will burble to life later Vehicles like this 73 Dodge Charger were equipped from the factory with an electronic ignition module the electronic ignition module has to be powered with 12 volts during cranking and it is in no way connected to the brown ignition 2 circuit those Vehicles still have power on ignition 1 during cranking anything older than this you definitely need to combine the two and it's probably good practice to just do it on these anyway now there's one particular case where I actually see this symptom the most it'll crank and crank and crank and won't fire till the key is released and that's what these Mopar electronic ignition conversion kits these still require a ballast resistor but as I mentioned the regular ignition one feed loses its power when the engine is cranking so this module doesn't have any juice there are ways to get around this basically the use of a diode on the ignition 2 circuit that way it can jump power over to this module but Power can't flow back through the other way there's probably a diagram for this somewhere on the internet let's be on the scope of this video anyway now I know what you're thinking you're thinking aha I can use a fancy aftermarket coil that doesn't require a resistor I'll throw that into my Mopar I'll bypass the resistor and I'll have a party not so fast there Buster I've already done extensive testing on that one so I'll tell you right here and now if you've got points you're gonna cook them really fast the resistor is there to protect all of these components not just the coil this set of points is not going to do what you want it's not going to trigger one of these super fancy high output coils without a resistor without getting really really mad I believe this is possible with the Mopar 4-pin ignition box I've never tried it myself but I think this thing would be able to trigger a fancy coil like that no problem I might put more load on it though I really don't know your mileage will definitely vary on that one I've been asked to do a video on HEI conversions and I will this is not that but for the ATI module conversion you get a fancy high performance coil to go with it and you combine ignition one and two like I talked about with a jumper wire you power the whole thing off the original coil positive wire and you're good to go yeah simple combination of Parts like this solves a lot of the ignition problems we're so used to having on these classic Mopars although that does bring me to one final point lots of folks say that if you're gonna drive one of these Mopars you need to have an extra ballast resistor in the glove box because they fail all the time I detailed that resistor failure I experienced in my 73 Challenger some years ago I'm having trouble remembering any other failures and I have logged a lot of miles and a lot of Mopars so I'm not saying they're wrong because it does happen and it's a cheap part so it's good insurance especially if you're going to daily drive one of these things but these are not an everyday failure item they just aren't in fact I've had way more failures with these damn things I can remember one particular instance that saw me pushing my 74 Dart sedan out of the McDonald's drive-through because it just went kaput you might want to carry one of those instead or maybe both so I can't tell you how many of these I've killed but that's another story the quality of modern commercially available points and condensers being what it is you can bet your butt I'm carrying spares of those multiples in fact all I'm saying is the balance resistor is not full of voodoo and Witchcraft it's a simple device it's easy to know when that is the problem and it's pretty easy to know when it isn't and hopefully if nothing else this video helps you understand that and I think that's all I have to say about that my channel is sitting right around 14 and a half thousand subscribers right now with more views and shares and all that fancy YouTube stuff than ever so I really want to thank you for being a part of it you're helping me in my quest for global domination and that's awesome here at dead Dodge garage there's no writing staff there's no producer there's no editor there's no filmographer there's no Graphics designer and there's certainly no team of mechanics that come into the night and finish these projects there's just me and my increasingly crazy hairdo so I do truly want to thank you for watching that's awesome and I really appreciate it and remember socks are just portable carpets now who's gonna clean all this

Channel: Dead Dodge Garage

Views: 145,361

Keywords: Mopar, MuscleCar, ClassicCar, Trucks, Mechanic

Id: 7Re_L-OlEOo

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023