Ignition Switch

[64Belvedere]

I'm going through the underhood Harness on my 64 Belvedere and replacing the hacked up elecronic ignition wires. Anyway, the instructions for the mopar kit tell you to find the feed wire that comes into the balast resistor from the ignition. When I test with my multimeter both wires leading to the ballast are live with the key in the run pos. According to the wiring diagram for the car, only one should be. Any ideas? Do I have a bad ignition switch?

 

[Meep-Meep]

One side of the ballast goes to the coil+ so the other comes from the switch and that's the 12V feed. If the circuit is complete (non broken resistor) you will measure voltage on both sides of the resistor. Also the voltage reg ties in there too (blue wire I believe).

 

[64Belvedere]

On the shematic, both the Brown and Dk Blue come from the ignition, through the bulkhead connector directly to the resistor. The brown goes though the resister to the Voltage reg to the alt. The Dk Blue goes though the resistor to the + on the coil. with no alternator or regulator hooked up should I be getting feed from both the brown and the Dk Blue? Does the brown go through the voltage reg to energize the field in the alternator?

 

[Meep-Meep]

I should be looking at a schematic so I can follow easier. One wire should be the RUN circuit and the other is probably START and by passes the ballast when the IGN switch is in cranking mode. The voltage reg gets its power from the ballast key on circuit I think and yes, it does regulate the voltage to the ALT field (green wire). If you ground the blue wire through a test light you are actually completing that circuit and if nothing happens then start tracing back until you find a bad connection or switch.

 

[64Belvedere]

It is not the ignition switch. Tested with a known good one this evening. Somewhere, the Brown is getting power with the key in the run position. I did however find out that the Mopar parts guy here sold me the wrong ballast resistor. He sold me the .14 ohm one for the chrome box instead of the one ohm one for the orange box setup. Maybe that is allowing my coil to overheat....Now to get the ignition wiring sorted...

 

[Meep-Meep]

Having a lower resistance in the coil circuit, that circuit will draw more current and run hot. Also the orange box may not like the higher current and may burn out so good thing you found that problem.