While hooking up my e-fan, I noticed that when my key is in the ON position, one of my ballast resistors on the strut tower started getting very hot. I was wondering if this is normal. My car is a 79 and my ignition is all stock, except for my coils. I changed the coils for some Accel coils last summer, since one of the original ones was shot. After I put the coils in last summer, I didn't pay attention to the ballast resistors, but while plugging the e-fan in this week, I noticed it because I could smell something burning.

I've done some searching, and found out that the original trailing coil on the 79s are apparently lower voltage then the 81 and up. The ballast resistor that is getting hot is the one closest to the engine, and seems to be connected to the trailing coil. So my question is if I used a coil with higher voltage, can it be the cause of the burning ballast?

If this is the case, I have a distributor from an 84. If I swap to an electronic ignition, could this solve my problem? Since the ballast resistors would be removed anyway?

 

Hmmm, I've never heard of a fried ballast resistor, but then again I rarely see any SA's around here. I do know that there's no problem with running two high performance coils in an FB, so I would have to say yes. Of course, there's no need to run a high voltage coil for your trailing ignition (unless you're running some serious boost) but I have done it without problems, so it should'nt be a problem.

 

If you are not restoring to stock condition. I would swap to the electronic distributor. Greatly simplifies the system and does away with the points. One of the first things I do to my old school rotaries.

 

That's what I'll do then, I'll swap to electronic ignition, since I have all of the parts already. I've read the HowTo on the Mazspeed website, but does anyone have any pictures of the process? I'm a very visual person, so it would help to have pictures.