Coil Voltage

blewbyoutobad said

The reason I am asking is that I saw an article on how how much better the HEI system is and that it delivers full voltage to the coil at run. No ballast. This article was showing Mopar and Ford guys how to convert to HEI using their stock distributors as the signal. Claiming to provide better performance. I have a friend who actually did this and hid it all inside an orange box. Wondering if theres any performance gain for the trouble.

Spark It Up: How to Convert a Ford or Mopar Distributor to GM HEI

Click to expand...

This within limits of engineering "back then" is a misconception. HEI performance is not because of eliminating the ballast per se. You could come up with a coil that would operate directly on 12V that would give good spark output, and of course now, they exist

But "back in the day" some performance coils such as the great big Mallory rectangular coil and even some of the Accel coils USED A SECOND BALLAST in series with the OEM. So they actually used MORE ballast resistance than OEM but got hotter spark out of the coils