Friday I put in a 1 ohm ballast resistor and it got so hot so fast that I almost ignited my fire wall. So I quite and drove my other car home (my Europa lives in my sister's garage, across town). This turned out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to my Europa, more on that below.
My brain ping woke me up at 3 am Saturday. The new gear reduction starter has only 1 spade terminal on the solenoid. The original has 2. I read in the Knowledge Base that I needed to connect the two leads to the single terminal and did so. The original solenoid must have a diode between the two spade terminals and without it the ballast resistor seems to nearly short through the solenoid. I removed the wire that runs between the solenoid and the coil (no more cold start) and re-installed the original ballast resistor. The tach works and the car is running well again! A non-ballasted coil and pointless ignition are still on my long term to do list, but I want to figure out how to deal with the tach.....
I am not sure why the car idled rough and stalled before I changed the starter. However, before even ordering the new starter I changed the in-line fuel filter as I was very low on gas and had just run the first tank through it after 20 years in storage. Maybe it was starved for fuel? I also do not know why I previously stalled on the freeway. This worries me.
Why was my mechanical ineptitude so lucky? Friday a few hours after driving my other car home I was in the back yard and looked up to see an unoccupied Honda rapidly rolling downhill and accelerating. I watched as it rolled down from a building on the street above, crossed the street, and plowed into my Mazda. Had I fixed the Europa, I'd have driven it home, parked in the same place, and it would be toast! The roll away was a ONE day old Honda Civic SI. A 17 year old girl left it in neutral and did not set the parking brake hard enough. When the brakes cooled, they let go and.... She was extremely upset while I was almost giddy because it was only my Mazda! Final thing, the cop called to the scene was Officer Downes. His first name was Upsen!
