I recently picked up a buddies project car that has been sitting for 5 or 6 years. The engine in it is a 350 out of a 69 Camaro. My current hurdle is getting it to spark. It has a Mallory Unilite 37 series distributor (IIRC), Mallory coil and ballast resistor. The plug wires are new (spiral core) and the spark plugs are good (gap seems about right). As per Mallory instructions I have the ignition module wired as follows:

- Brown wire directly to ground (tests good).
- Green wire to coil negative.
- Red wire to one side (lets call it side "a") of ballast resistor then to a switch (tests good) which goes directly to the battery positive.
- Coil positive goes to side "b" of the ballast resistor.

The coil, distributor and ballast resistor are, to my knowledge, 5 or 6 years old but never used save for todays cranking.

Any ideas? If more information or testing is need I'd be happy to oblige.

Thanks

 

Your problem may be not enough juice to the coil. You're double resisting the coil, if you still have it hooked up to the factory resistance wire. If so, then take the ballast resistor out of the line. Be sure not to hook the distributor up to a full 12 volt source, check with a meter. Also, is the 12 volt starter coil feed wire still connected to the + side of the coil? You need that to give the ignition a jolt because the starter is sucking a lot of juice as you crank. So...if you're double resisted, and the starter wire isn't connected, it's no surprise at all why the engine won't fire.
One more thing. I have read where some guys have been having their Unilite crap well out before their time. One suggestion is to take your ballast resistor, and install it between the power source and the red wire that goes to the distributor module (I know, Mallory doesn't show that in their instructions), but I'd give that a shot.

 

Sorry for the delay in response and thanks again for the information. I had wondered why Mallory did their wiring the way they did when they heavily imply that if the resistance wire or ballast resistor isn't in line with the power in on the distributor that it will burn out. Regardless, I attempted the altered wiring to no avail. I had the coil power going directly to the battery too. I then tested the coil and distributor and found the distributor module was shot and the primary coil of the coil was slightly out of spec. I guess now would be a good time to make sure the compression is good before I spend more time and money on this engine.

 

Oh whattaya know, another burned out Unilite. I'd pick a better brand of ignition, like MSD for instance.