Red Hot Ballast

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bavbob

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Single green wire to ballast base from fuse #6. When hooked to the ballast resistor with the key in the running position, , the resistor turns cheery red. Multimeter to the green wire gives me 12V and 1.0 ohms regardless of ohm setting. Ballast itself has 1.2 ohms across it. I could not get a read on the wire's current. I will add that this issue existed when I bought the car, then disappeared. My resto is done and while starting it today, the issue appeared again. Interestingly, it does start despite this.

Wiring diagram has this wire as a straight shot from the fuse box to the ballast other than running through a diagnostic port. I can run a new wire from fuse 6 but really want to figure out what is going on here. Any help appreciated.
 
Man, I ditched my ballast and just run a Blue Bosch coil.

I'm thinking bad ballast resistor generating too much resistance. How much resistance is there across the ballast while there is juice flowing through it.
 
Ding ding! Chris might have it. Just chased this myself.
I also used New starter that you mentioned above.
Fixed my problem by removing the extra wire on starter. Seems wierd but we'll documented here.
You end up with 2 wires on new style starter. 1 is big gauge from battery. 2. Is solenoid power from ignition.
 
Remove wire from 12:00 position, it is always hot with ignition on which is very bad for your ballast. On the original starter it was on only when starter was on.
 
So in removing the black/red wire at 12 oclock on the solenoid, the ballast no longer heats up but turn the key and now I get one click at the starter/solenoid and then the dash goes dead, all ignition etc lights off. If I remove power from the car and then replace, all the dash lights come back but then turning the ignition is the same, click then dead. The starter works fine when the black/red wire is attached to the solenoid at the 12 oclock position.

Only other lines to solenoid are OEM cable from battery to starter at 6 oclock, heavy black wire at 7 oclock. Wiring to the starter itself is only from solenoid. Even if I run a jumper cable from the battery positive side directly to the solenoid, same thing. What am I missing?
 
The ground from battery to frame, frame to block
Check both battery connections too
 
Yesterday I had a jumper cable directly to the starter and the ground directly to the chassis and still had the same issue, only one click at the starter then dead, starter ok when black/red hooked at 12 oclock but red ballast. Just did the cable thing now and starter turns with wire off at 12 oclcock. ????????????? BTW, this is an automatic and if you recall our phone call 3 years ago, low voltage to the starter relay, so I ran a hot wire directly from the battery to the relay.
 
Home run connections don’t go through other connectors.
Home run test connections are direct.

take connector off battery negative
jumper cable on negative terminal to block or intake.
bypass the two grounds cables and all four connection points.

now you have home run connection.
 
Sounds like the high current drawn by starter motor can't return through your grounding. Effective gauge / current ability has probably been dimished in those ground cables Don asks you to bypass. His test will prove that and then you have to inspect the connection points he mentions. Your black/red is providing additional path to ground and so it works - but not the right way.
 
I tightened all of the grounds after cleaning. All seems good. Want to thank you gents for all your help....again.
 
Okay, so the top bolt on the solenoid gets NO CONNECTION to anything???

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The blk/rd wire which feeds the ballast has a female spade so almost without thought, you hook it to the male spade at 12 oclock. Mine now hangs free.

I am not sure why I did not have this issue with my Bavaria since I also placed a SR 441x starter. I described my 635 csi as a well-mannered child that would ask for 5 dollars versus my M6 that would take 20 without telling me. I did not know a similar situation would exist between my E9 and E3.
 
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