Amateur Restoration of a 1960 Morris Mini

[BruceK]

My '88 Mini had the ballast built into the wire running to the coil. It's been 7 or 8 years since I fitted an electronic distributor and I had to unwrap the loom with the wire to the coil and trace it back 2-3 feet ( at least!) toward the firewall to get to part in the loom with the wire before the ballast had been fitted. I ended up just running my own new wire along side the other existing wire down to the coil in case I ever wanted to switch back to using a ballast.

[Dan Moffet]

My '88 Mini had the ballast built into the wire running to the coil. It's been 7 or 8 years since I fitted an electronic distributor and I had to unwrap the loom with the wire to the coil and trace it back 2-3 feet ( at least!) toward the firewall to get to part in the loom with the wire before the ballast had been fitted. I ended up just running my own new wire along side the other existing wire down to the coil in case I ever wanted to switch back to using a ballast.

My 1980's era Mini has the same ballasted system. Much more than 8 years ago, I installed a first generation 123 Ignition system for Mini. If I recall correctly, the options were with or without vacuum advance,, but they'd both run ballasted or unballasted. I did not have to change or add a wire. It would run on either voltage. I presume it has the capacity to detect input voltage. I suppose during starting it accepts the full 12V, then runs on 8-9V of the ballasted circuit.

[94touring]

I was looking up the 123 instructions recently and you can run as low as 1 ohm with it as I recall. It has a way to regulate itself.  Most coils for us are 1.5 or 3 anyway, though I just bought a couple of tons performance 1.2 ohm coils to run in the inno that the dizzy says needs 1 ohm. The 1 ohm coils from spares or the like are stupid expensive right now. I can absolutely see a difference between a 1.5 and 3 ohm on it just by the idle quality and bump in rpms.  This summer when the bus coil died on a 123 I used a 3 ohm to get me 2 hours to a town to grab a 1.5 60k volt coil. And even the girlfriend with me with 0 car knowledge noted it drove better.