Also, my coil has 12V at the (+) wire with a new ballast....how is it supposed to have 6-8?
What's the easiest way to check if your resistor is working or not?
Even with a ballast resistor it will read 12V at the +ve coil wire until you connect it to the coil. It's because the resistance in the ballast is negligible compared to the resistance in the air between the end of the wire and ground, so all the meter can see is the battery voltage. It's like measuring your house water pressure with all the taps turned off. When you open a tap (or connect the coil) the pressure (or voltage) drops.
Also, even when you have the wire connected to the coil it will still read 12V unless the coil is energising - it's like opening a tap when another one is still turned off further down the pipe (so like if you have points and they are open, or on some modules that shut off when the engine is not turning; like some of the Ford Durasparks do).
If you measure the voltage with the coil energising then you should see less than 12V at coil +ve. You can make it happen by grounding the coil -ve wire, or have the motor idling. If it's idling you will probably need an analogue voltmeter to measure it because a digital one will be bouncing about all over the place as the voltage jumps up and down (maybe unless you use it set on AC - I haven't tried that).
Easy way to check the resistor ? Resistors don't really go short circuit. If they fail they go open circuit and the car won't run. So, as long as it's wired up right, the easiest way to check if the resistor is working is to start the car and see if it stays running after it starts.
If you want to really check it good then you need a meter that will measure low resistances. The common digital ones only have a 0-200 ohm range which gets a bit flaky below about 5 ohms.
I seem to remember Mopar specs different ballast ratings for different systems between about 1.2 and 1.6 ohms.
