I was under the hood just looking and noticed that after running for a minute or so the new ballast started smoking
The above is not totally uncommon as they do get pretty hot. Any residue on them will cause them to smoke for a short time. Otherwise I would say a flaky condenser or connection. Check the ends of the coil wire, I was chasing an intermittent ignition problem one time and found a bad connection on one end of the coil wire. It had been arcing for awhile and burnt the cap and center conductor quite aways up inside the wire.
