1977 Dodge Power Wagon Camper

ol' grouch wrote:

westend wrote:
Maybe some of the Dodge owners know about this: In some of the older trucks there was a resistor ballast on the firewall. I can't remember the number I've seen fail but it is a couple of handfuls. I had an old Coronet that had the failing ballast, too. IIRC, the workaround was to connect two of the posts together to energize the ignition circuit. This part may have been phased out by 1977.

How about it OP? Did you pull the trigger on the Power Wagon?

It was the balast resistor and was still used then. Chrysler didn't get away from the balast resistor until much later. I always carried a spare wrapped in a paper towel in my tool box. The Power Wagon name was used to trade on the heavy duty Power Wagons reputation. In '80 or '81, Dodge started using the Power Ram name on 4X4 trucks.

The resistor is held onto the firewall with one screw and the wires plug into the end. It's about 3 inches long and is white porcelain. It's purpose is to cut the 12 volts down to 6 volts for the coil. If it fails in the field, you CAN jumper the wires together and get home but it's rough on the electrical componenets.

My 75 clipper had starting issues. Happened every time I filled up the tank(s), and randomly in any other situation. No one could make it fail so we never could diagnose the actual issue. However, we switched out the balast resistor several times, then worked our way through all the other components. Finally, we did this Mod. Have to say, it was the best thing I ever did. The spark is strong enough to start through a flooded engine and no more worrying that if I turn off the engine I won't be able to start it back up.