Re: followup comment on coil

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, Colin J Brodsky wrote:

> I'm sure Jerry Casper has never ever in his entire life left a key on or
> forgotten to turn off a light, or had any lapse of memory whatsoever, but
> guess what - it happens to those of us of relatively low mental capacity.
> Had to go out to get some gas and run some errands and forgot that I had
> left the key on while I was messing around with the engine.
> 
> Anyway, that being said, from some of the more constructive responses,
> sounds like the ballast resistor will manage the problem so I'll do that.
> My '63 actually has a later 232 engine that I built from scratch and put
> into the '63 Classic so the starter/relay is same as a '66 model and may
> not be quite right with the '63 harness.  I had a '66 Classic with 232 that
> I drove for 3 years in grad school.  In that car, I had used the same
> generic non-resistor coil and never had problems with it heating up, so
> perhaps they changed sometime between '63 and '66 - something I never
> checked through on the '63 conversion.

It's really likely that also, the primary resistance of a 12V
spark coil depends on the model, manufacturer, year, blah blah,
so some will last longer without a ballast resistor than others.

Obviously key on for 3 hrs falls into the 'sh*t happens'
category, and while not Good, with a ballast resistor the coil
should survive.

(If the engine stops with the points closed, the coil will be
energized 100% of the time. WHen it's running, the points are
close about half the time (dwell), hence energized half the
time, half the heat. It could have stopped with points open,
and the coil would have lived.)