Not the ballast resistor?

[68 Sport Satellite]

I have had intermittent problems with aftermarket ignition switches at the connector. I usually pull the connectors and squeeze the ends to make a tighter connection.

View attachment 1750895

good advice. I had an issue like this with an aftermarket battery negative ground cable that had pre-crimped connectors. The connector crimp failed in less than a year. All of those pre-made ones hanging on the rack at the parts store are crap. So I had custom cables made and haven't had a problem since.

 

[Joe Del Monte]

Drive it over and I will fix it

 

[ynst]

For years MoPar ran TWO wires from the ignition switch to the ballast resistor.

One wire is hot in the run position whilst the other wire is hot in the start position.
The reason for doing this was to provide a bypass to the ballast resistor through a ballast resistor with LOWER resistance.

The purpose of the ballast resistor is to limit the voltage to the coil to prevent overheating but this is often detrimental to supplying enough voltage to the coil when the engine is cranking over on a cold winter's day and the starter is drawing an excessive amount of current.

Ford and GM solved this dilemma by adding a separate ballast resistor bypass circuit into their respective starter solenoids. This wire ran directly from the solenoid to the coil side of the ballast resistor and applied straight battery voltage directly to the coil during the starting sequence. It's the "I" terminal on a Ford solenoid and the "R" terminal on a GM starter solenoid. As soon as the key was released, this circuit went dead and the ballast resistor, now, came into play lowering the voltage to the coil.

Chrysler used two wires on the ignition switch instead.

Check the integrity of the wires connected to the ignition switch as well as the switch itself.

 

[451Mopar]

So my 70 Charger 440 won't start, again. Doesn't seem to get any spark until I turn the ignition key backwards and then a brief fire. This has always been the tell-tale sign of a ballast resistor for me. But I just dropped in a new one and nothing. Same issue.

Where else should I look?

Thanks.

I can't resist. There is a bunch of troubleshooting threads on here, but on all but one of my cars I have converted to CD Ignition boxes.
Stronger spark and more accurate ignition timing, plus built in Rev-Limiter.
I haven't used this new MSD "Digital" 6AL, but it looks good.
MSD Ignition 6425 MSD Digital 6AL Ignition Controllers | Summit Racing

 

[ynst]

I can't resist. There is a bunch of troubleshooting threads on here, but on all but one of my cars I have converted to CD Ignition boxes.
Stronger spark and more accurate ignition timing, plus built in Rev-Limiter.
I haven't used this new MSD "Digital" 6AL, but it looks good.
MSD Ignition 6425 MSD Digital 6AL Ignition Controllers | Summit Racing

Conversion or not, it still won't start with a 6AL if the TWO wires aren't involved in the process.

I just went through this on a customer's '69 GTX about six weeks ago. The MSD was dead during crank and the brand new crate hemi wouldn't fire. The second wire from the ignition switch wasn't connected at all.