So a friend of mine is restoring an old bonneville car ( more to come much later). In his photo documentation of the car , there are 2 ballast resitors mounted on his firewall. No one seems to know how they are hooked up and how they work. I suggested that the HAMB guys might be able to help. He is looking for as much information as he can glean cause this thing has to run to be in a show. Here is the unit. I was able to read the top as shown in picture 1. It says on the top that it replaces your standard Ford ballast resistor under the dash. That made sense until you got to the part about the light buld. The last picture shows the light bulb. We were guessing that maybe higher wattage bulbs might drop the voltage but we can't be sure. This Bonneville car has 2 coils so were are guessing that one ballast resistor was needed for each coil. The distributor is a flathead dual point unit. So here is your Sunday morning headscratcher. Anyone have any idea? thanks for the help
Ever notice how a resistor and a light bulb look similar on a circuit diagram? That's because they both do essentially the same thing; convert energy from one form to another through resistance to the current. An incandescent bulb does it by making light and hear, a ballast resistor does it by creating heat. I know nothing about that unit, but with the above mentioned I would bet some good money that that is a ballast resistor that is adjustable depending on the light bulb put into it or the bulb acts as a replaceable element for it.
BUSTED !!!! He and I talked about these this morning. He isn't sure if he needs to hook them up for the small amount of running needed and if hooked up, what wattage bulb they would require. He and I thought it might be fun to ask on the board. Turns out he has several of them............go figure !! He has several of everything else We weren't counting on you to answer
From what I was told years ago, and I really am not sure how this works, but I was told that these were used instead of standard ballast resistors to control/protect the amount of current or voltage to the gauges. I guess the original resistors would allow enough change that damage could occur to the gauges, but using this stlye resistor it would burn the filiment before damaging anything else. Kind of like a fuse or circuit breaker. Like I said, this was told to me along long time ago when I was a kid...so I might be wrong on what or how, but it's the best I can remember.