on my 68 when you turn the key on but do not start it, say when I am checking the blinkers to make sure all lights are working.... the wire from the ,, shoot can't remember.. either coil or dist.. that goes to the main block in the fire wall gets way hot,, has melted some of the outer coating on other wires.
whats up ??

 

do you have a ballast resistor in the system.

 

Is the wire your talking about the resistor wire (this wire have a cloth outer shield)

I've also seen this wire melt when you use electronic ignition and don't upgrade this wire to a heavier gauge.

 

I put a ballast resistor in my self on the fire wall and it helped. But still gets warm.
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Yes,
The wire has the cloth outer coating. and the car does have a mallory
unilite dist.

 

The original wire to the coil is a resistance wire. If you're still hooking up to that, then you don't want to add a ballast resistor too. This is assuming you still have the original points and condenser style distributor. If you converted over to an electronic distributor, like HEI, you want it hooked up to a full 12 volt power line, and you don't use the resistance wire.

 

i used a mallary electronic distributor in the netter last year and fried the hot wire not using a ballast. crew left the key on fried the coil too.

 

can you give me more details on using a 12 volt wire ?
thanks

 

Hey Blew! I was checking out your album! Nice ride! Very clean indeed!

Electrical is one of my weak points, but the only thing I know that would cause a wire to get warm and melt is if:

A: You are pulling too many amps through it, which means you need a heavier guage wire.

B: The wire is grounding somewhere in the circuit.

C: Somewhow somebody cross wired the circut which means you need a schematic to follow the wires. (Easy to google)

If you havn't messed with the wiring, I would start by tracing the wire as far back into the harness as you could looking for area's that the bare wire is exposed and could be touching another wire or even grounding out on a piece of sheet metal etc.

Hey, one last thing. I noticed you were in Mi. I'm near Lapeer Mi! Ever hear of the Michigan F-Body association? Huge F-body car show in Milford each Spring!

 

The factory cloth covered wire is a resistance wire. As I said, you don't want to also add a ballast resistor to it. You would use a ballast if your supply wire wasn't a resistance wire (12 volt supply), but that would be if you still have a points & condenser distributor. With that, voltage was stepped down, otherwise the points will fry. Do you have a volt test meter?

 

The Mallory does want to be hooked up to a resistance supply:
1) Your factory resistance wire or,
2) A 12 volt supply (if a car doesn't have a factory resistance wire) with an in-line ballast resistor.
With no resistance, the Mallory will start popping modules on you.
Get a test meter and see what the voltage is going into the coil.
And make sure the Mallory is wired correctly: Red to resistance supply, brown to engine ground, green to - terminal on coil.