Finn Lassen wrote:

I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but why at Sun'n'Fun? I was
planning to leave around noon Friday, had packed as much as I could in
the RV-3 and pulled the plane out and started it. Disabling the trailing
coil killed the engine. After checking the fuses to the coils I was
fairly certain that it was the ballast resistor in the leading coils
assembly. So I went scrounging for a .35 ohm resistor at the outdoor
vendor tents. No luck. So I bought a roll of 24 gauge wire, cut off 14'
and used that (still need to find a good quality resistor to put in
there). Flight home Friday evening was uneventful, as was the flight
back and forth Saturday to pick up my tent and do some last day
shopping.

Paul, thanks for the lift back and forth to Lakeland.

Finn

Too bad I left on Thursday. Could have helped you find a resistor
in town. Sounds like that stock resistor is guaranteed to fail.

Paul Lamar

Ed Anderson wrote:

Hi Finn,

    Glad to hear that you make it back from Sun & Fun.  Your ballast
resistor failure in the leading ignition unit is the third one to fail that
I am aware of.  It happened to both Tracy Crook and Myself (when I was still
using the leading coil for my HALTECH EFI trigger).  It appears that it is a
matter of time.  It seems to happen somewhere between 50 and 150 hours.

Both Tracy and I went to higher wattage (10 watts in my case and I believe
25 watts in Tracy's case) wirewound resistors whose size required them to be
mounted external to the module (out in the cooling air).  Both are still
working fine.

    Had great time camping out with you and Chuck, must do it again sometime
{:>)

Ed Anderson
Matthews, NC

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