Ballast Resistor
All the moaning I have heard over Uni-Lite failures stems from people NOT running the system correctly is amazing. I never saw Boots Mallory ever run any Uni-Lite without correct ballast resistance. All that came about after Boots died, and some know it all "engineer" spewed that "take that resistor out, it'll make the system produce 80 billion spark plug volts". All I ever saw doing so to do, murder the Uni-Lite modules. SAME occurs with today's default electronic sets of points, PerTronix Ignitor.
Way too many 'educated engineer' morons bleat and yell to remove all ballast resistors from the U-L, which will increase spark output. There never has been a U-L that was designed to work witu0out a ballast resistor, and, in fact, there is need for more than stock OEM resistance. So much for all the over hype sales ads.
Not many people are aware Boots developed his systems to use OEM MOPAR parts, like vacuum advances, rotors, caps and points. One of those items was the Mallory ballast resistor, 0.60 ohms, straight from a MOPAR. It was designed to work with the stock vehicle resistor, in line. This kept the U-L alive. I have recommended to a lot of people they use both the stock ballast resistor AND the Mallory/MOPAR, and their U-L failures and issues go away.
I have many people running stock U-L Mallory, with stock MOPAR resistor, Mallory resistor, stock MOPAR coil, 7, or 8 mm magnetic suppression spiral core plug wires, and spark plug gaps @ .035 maximum, with no problems. I'd rather have a Uni-Lite electronic points unit, than any and all PerTronix disasters. sorry, this from all the Ignitors I have replaced, 5 - 55 gallon barrels of them in decades of conversions, all dead on arrival.
Opinionated? NO, just been there, in person, and fixed them.