Checking Ballast Resistor @ 1.2 ohms?

I am not all that adept at electrical testing. Specs for factory ballast resistor I looked up are 1.2 ohms. My Actron multi-meter has ohms scales of "200", "2k", "20k", "200k", "2m", "200M", so you can see how a rookie "electrician" may be confused using the meter. So how many ohms are 1.2? Are we taking about a single ohm, hundreds of ohms, thousands? What scale am I supposed to use? Thank you.

1.2 is a little over 1 ohm. Use the 200 scale. Your meter may not be accurate enough to measure that low of a resistance well. So if you get something close, like 1 to 1.5 it is probably ok.

Set your meter to 200, it is actual 1.2 ohms. IIRC ohms is 10% of voltage, but don't quote me on it lol.

My readings come out zero, instrument must not be accurate enough. Thank you.

dibbons said:

My Actron multi-meter has ohms scales of "200", "2k", "20k", "200k", "2m", "200M", so you can see how a rookie "electrician" may be confused using the meter. So how many ohms are 1.2? Are we taking about a single ohm, hundreds of ohms, thousands

Click to expand...

This explanation is very basic. Not intended to describe ohm's law etc.

When you touch the multimeter leads together you should get 0 ohms (or about there) when they are not touching you should get "OL" or some other wording to indicate that there is so much resistance that electrical flow has stopped like.

0 ohms = no resistance to electrical flow. (Think a wire)

Any value over 0 ohms means the electrical flow is slowed down, or if the resistance value is large enough stopped completely (think a wire that has been cut)

Again this is very basic.

Another way to think about it.

Your garden hose will flow a gallon per minute with no resistance in the hose.
If you kink the hose (resistance) it will flow 1/2 gallon per minute.

If you put a valve on the end and close it (maximum resistance) no water flows

I think I'll resist the urge to comment!

I'm not surprised your meter does not read this resistance. The lower the resistance, the more difficult accuracy becomes. Some of the Fluke meters have a function to eliminate error caused by the (low) resistance of the test leads. Even then they get ?? down lower. Also, generally, just making a good enough connection with the probes becomes an issue.