ballast resistor and heat

[WZ JUNK]

I installed a new ballast resistor and now after a minuet or so it starts to get hot and a trail of smoke comes off of it.  I thought I had a short to ground somewhere.  I put a 4 amp fuse inline with the power to the resistor to see if it was drawing more that 4 amps and if it would burn the fuse.  It does not burn the fuse.  Is the ballast just burning off contaminates from the manufacturing process or is something-weird going on?   I am referring to the burnt Willys that I have been working on.  It has a Mallory Unilite distributor and an Accel yellow coil.  The module in the distributor is new and the engine runs but the resistor gets hot.

[Fat Cat]

I installed a new ballast resistor and now after a minuet or so it starts to get hot and a trail of smoke comes off of it.  I thought I had a short to ground somewhere.  I put a 4 amp fuse inline with the power to the resistor to see if it was drawing more that 4 amps and if it would burn the fuse.  It does not burn the fuse.  Is the ballast just burning off contaminates from the manufacturing process or is something-weird going on?   I am referring to the burnt Willys that I have been working on.  It has a Mallory Unilite distributor and an Accel yellow coil.  The module in the distributor is new and the engine runs but the resistor gets hot.

I have seen alot of the new ones do that for the first 15 minutes or so. If it does it longer than that I would think there is something wrong with it.

[Kctom]

I installed a new ballast resistor and now after a minuet or so it starts to get hot and a trail of smoke comes off of it.  I thought I had a short to ground somewhere.  I put a 4 amp fuse inline with the power to the resistor to see if it was drawing more that 4 amps and if it would burn the fuse.  It does not burn the fuse.  Is the ballast just burning off contaminates from the manufacturing process or is something-weird going on?   I am referring to the burnt Willys that I have been working on.  It has a Mallory Unilite distributor and an Accel yellow coil.  The module in the distributor is new and the engine runs but the resistor gets hot.

John, they do get really hot and give off smoke the first time you put power to it. Never had them smoke after that. If you are going to use that unilite junk be sure you inatall the unit that Mallory sells to protect the unilite from voltage spikes. It cost $35.00 or close to that from Summit. By the time a guy buys and unilite and the voltage spike protector you have spent about what a MSD billet stand alone unit, only now you would have the best instead of high priced junk.
Can you tell how I feel about the unilite. The magnetic Mallory is Ok

[rooster]

Yes, They get hot! Hot enough to fry a egg. I asked the same question when I installed mine.