viva le reistance!

[scott]

my iia has no voltage regulator, it has an altenator now. on the bulkhead it has two doohickeis on both sides of the coil. one looks like it's made of bakelite the other ceramic. the ignition feed goes into the bakelite then out to the ceramic then out to the + low volt connection on the coil. my nieghbor check this out for me, cuz i'm ohm meterly challenged, and says he reads that there is 0.8 ohms of resistence from the two doohickies.

does this mean it's stepping down the volts to the coil, to the petronics electronis ignition?
how much, 1 volt?
can i power the fuel guage for a better read from this 11 volts by running a wire from th + lead of the coil to the fuel gauge?

by the way the doohickies where there when i got the truck and it had points & condensor. i added the eltronic ignition.

[greenmeanie]

Scott,
At least one of those is a ballast resistor. Its purpose is to let your coil have the full 12V for start and then drop it down to 9V for normal operation on a points ignition. Dropping to 9V is supposed to help prevent arcing on the points thus increasing their life span.

As you point out you have a Pertronix you just don't need the ballast resistor anymore as long as you convert to a coil with an internal resistance of 3ohms. Think Lucas sport coil, Pertronix Flamethrower and a multitude of others used on vehicles that had electronic ignition before the advent of coil packs.

More volts means you either have a more rapid rise of charge in the coil between events = more reliable spark at higher rpm or you can open out the plug gap to get a bigger, fatter spark although this can affect your timing slightly.

[scott]

green thanks, i'm half tempted to stop posting and just pm you with my questions.

for now i think i'll have to keep this set up because my coil has some writting on it about "use with external resisters" or some thing like that. and petraonix instructions say if your coil had externals before continue to use 'em w/their stuff

after all i've spent on the princess since last sept you'd think i break down and by a coil for an electraonic ignition. i will but not this weekend.

if i check the resistence of my coil and it reads 3 ohms or more i don't need these things? do i just check between the + and - low volt contacts?

so these little things couldn't/shouldn't be used to step down the voltage going into the gauges that i hear work better on 10 volts than they do with 12, right?

thanks again.

[greenmeanie]

Scott, I'll PM you my e-mail if you want. I'm always happy to talk Rover.

If your existing coil states it is for use with external resistors then keep your existing set up. Wait until you get a coil matched designed for electronic ignition as you'll kill the current one by running it on 12V for too long.

As far as the gauges go I believe you want 10V and not 9V. The range the gauge shows is based on a 10V input. 12V makes it read high and 9V would make it read low. Voltage stabilizers are pretty cheap so this is one of those situations I would just keep the stock set up.