Coil (3 or 5 ohms)

[panomania]

Hey guys, burnt up a coil this week. Was wandering if it was because I was using a 3 ohm coil. I am running a mallory unilite. 3 better with this dist. or 5 ohm? thanks, pano

[dirtydistrict]

Hi Panomania; i use a dyna dual fire wich works the same way I think that mallory (hall effect); I kept my "original" square 12v coil and don't have trouble. Coil burn when your ignition is on and engine don't run; but it happens also that it burns for ...nothing; I don't think there's anything to see with Mallory and don't remember how much ohm is for a point ignition but one think is sure: don't use electronic ignition coils.

[kell]

3 ohms is right for the Unilite. Points take 5 ohms. Mallory recommends between 2 and four ohms as I recall, depending on the application (street 3-4, racing 2-3).
Don't leave the ignition on for long when the bike is not running. You will get several amps running through the coil and the Mallory breaker if it happens to settle in the dwell position, which it probably will. Anytime one of those black vanes comes bewteen the infrared l.e.d. and the photo sensor it goes on dwell.
There's one coil on the market that the manufacturer states you can only use on ignitions with dwell control. I remember looking at a Dyna coil for a double-plug, single-fire application that I had to pass up for that reason. What kind of coil did you have?

[panomania]

Accel.