Teach me about ohms and coils Options

[jsayre914]

I am currently running a stock distributor on my 2.0 w/ Djet. It has the pertronix ignitor module made for my distributor with the vacume advance. I also had a flame thrower 3ohm coil made by pertronix. I am not sure how many ohms a stock bosch coil is, but my question is...

most high performance coils such as mallory, crane, even the flamethrower (not the one I have) comes with a resistance of .06 or less. Why is this, and what does the ohms do for you anyway. I am thinking to put one of the VERY low ohm coils on my engine to see if any better performance.

If you dont mind also explaining why i threw out my ballast resistor when I originally put the pertronix in. (as per installation instructions) what the heck did that do for a stock coil thats not needed for a 3 ohm coil?



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[toolguy]

From my high school shop class in 1964. . . .extremely simplified. . . . meaning lots of electrical magic properties and theories have been omitted. . .

All ignition coils in the begining were really 6 volt coils. . . when 12 volt systems came out in the 50's for most cars, the same old coils that were used from the early cars were used. . the new 12 volt wiring included a Ballast Resistor, whose job it was to drop the input voltage to the coil to 6 volts. . . an interesting side circuit was added from the ignition switch to the coil which bypassed the resistor during cranking only. . . this gave the coil a direct 12 volts with the theory that it would make the spark hotter during startup. . . [Yeah a 6 volt coil will work on 12 volts but it will overheat]

Input voltage/ current is what determines the gage of the wire used in the windings. . the ratio of the number of primary [low voltage side] winding to the number of secondary windings [Hi tension side] is what determines the output voltage to the plug

Ignition Points need a condenser for 2 reasons. . { The job of a condenser is to store energy} the condenser stores voltage and keeps the points from arching when they open. . plus , when the points open, the condenser causes an immediate spike of no energy into the primary, then the magnetic field in the primary windings collapse quickly, which causes the secondary winding to discharge into the spark plug,
I know from trouble shooting past electrical issues, that a car with a weak spark can be caused by a bad condenser alone.

That secondary discharge needs somewhere to go. . ie the spark plug. . without proper discharging the secondary high voltage will try to arc from the high tension terminal to the terminal that the points connect to. . . we're talking in excess of 20,000 volts. . . if it can't find that path, it will eventually arc inside the coil case and destroy the coil. . thats why you should always have a spark plug connected to a working coil..
. . .