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Originally Posted by surfsup

What’s the purpose of the resistor wire or ballast?

Some ignitions are meant to run on 8-9 volts for extended duty. At start up when the ballast resistor or resister wire is cold, a full 12 volts is delivered at start up for easy cold starts. As the resistor warms up, the voltage is lowered to the 8-9 volt range. With some ignitions, delivering the full 12 volts all the time will burn out some part of the ignition system. My recommendation is to use whatever resistor (or none at all) that the manufacturer of the ignition specifies.

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