What are we looking for as a # with a orange box and the supplied ballast key on no run? How much of a difference if we use the coil neg as per grounding the meter to motor?

The ballast/ coil combo in original stock form is pretty much the same on an ECU or points. What this means is that the coil half of the ballast works the same, and ..........not running.........

You have battery supply coming in from the ign switch, through the bulkhead, to the resistor (blue) to the coil + and through the coil to ground.

The coil is going to be drawing current with points closed OR ECU, so you have a HUGE VOLTAGE DROP through the resistor. This voltage drop is going to DEPEND ON

the condition of the wiring harness from the battery, through the bulkhead, ammeter, ignition switch (and connector) back OUT the bulkhead, and to the resistor and the connector there.

I have not checked this lately, but in "no run" I might expect as low as 4-5 volts, 9-12 in run, depending on RPM with system running at 14V.

A friend just bought a car and they put 2 resistors in line with a looks to be stk coil. I will ck volts and see why they stepped it down so much.I know its in line with the ing coil feed not the wiper .

""put 2 resistors in line""

When you put two ballast resistors in line, this equates to more voltage to the coil.
I ran two MP 1/4ohm ballasts for two years with a FBO coil, and the coil voltage went up two volts. The FBO coil is a good one and the two ballasts did not hurt it. That coil was designed for 11.5 volts. I would not attempt this on a stock type coil.

He told me he had 8 volts after the first one and 5 after the sec than the wire goes right to coil. He also told me the one is a 1.25ohm and a .8ohm

If you simply disconnect the positive lead from the coil, will the voltage you then read with a voltmeter be what is actually being passed through the system? That is: 11v-13v ahead of the resistor and 5v-6v after?

12 volt into the first one and 8 coming out, 8 going into the sec than 5 coming out.That is with meter grounded to engine.
Does he need the sec resistor?

This is another of those questions that was first asked without enough information.

THE QUESTIONS IS what COIL and what RESISTORS do you have there? The SIMPLE answer is that you generally want to match the resistor to the coil.

If you are using something like a GM HEI module for a switch, this is not always true.

Yancy,

""You must have put two resistors IN PARALLEL to do that.""

Correct,
They were wired in parallel.

I was looking at it and the coil looks stock black universal coil. I did some more test and the volts show about the same but comes in a little lower if If I use the coil neg for a ground.

Key on engine off -neg lead on engine ground and pos+ on the resistor input 12volts,output 8volts,into next resistor 8volts,ouput 5volts,at coil pos+ 5 volts. If I use the coil neg- for a ground I get about 1 volt less at each spot. I am wondering if they had a diff coil on here and it went bad and just threw this on here. Whats the stock voltage supposed to be?

How about this, we're sidetracked. Take the leads off of the coil and the ballast & ohm them (1) ballast (2)coil pri to pri (3)coil, either pri to center secondary on X 1000 (K) scale & post what you get. The nominal (listed) spec on the ballast supplied w the orange box kit is 1.25 ohms though there is some wiggle room there (less ohms=hotter spark shorter coil life & vice versa). lets see if we can ID what you have & almost forgot you have 2 ballasts so ohm each one & connect em in parallel and ohm the T'd ends again.

Th e funny thing is that the car runs. I hear whay your saying but mopar has to have a spec on how many volt goes to the coil.Some coils want 12volts some want less.Some coils are rated for 1.5ohm some are 3.0. I went to the msd web site and did some poking around and with the blaster coil they want you to use the mopar ballast and the one they sell together because the blaster is only .7ohms. I am just wondering what is the average voltage that a reg coil will see so we might be able to get rid of this extra ballast.