I have the ignitor 2 with a Flamethrower .6 ohm coil mounted horizontal, no balast just a straight 12 volts at the coil, plugs set tiny bit over standard gap. No problems what so ever starts first time every time.

Same here, i have 3 cars with ignitor 11 and flamethrower coils, 2 are mounted upright and one in stock location on its side , no resistors on any and had no problems.

I lost 2 or 3 Flamethrower I with Pertronix.  No ballast.  The coils would become very hot, and the minute the engine temp hit 180 the engine sputtered and died, wouldnt start for 10-15 minutes.  After things cooled down would start right up and do fine unless temp rose again in city traffic.  Went to a Pertronix II and Flamethrower II and no problems.

He might be able to use a cylindrical coil intended for use with the Ford Duraspark II system - they are less OHMs than the standard points coils but more than the Pertronix 1.5 OHM minimum by a safe margin. They are also designed to be used with fixed dwell / transistor ground systems. In the stock Ford arrangement they are fed through a 1.35 OHM resistance wire - but if I could find one as a salvage part (with the mating wiring clip), I might try it out with full voltage.

MSD has a ballast resistor that is .88 OHMs and it might be used to to "tune" a 1.5 OHM primary coil to a slightly lower AMP load - less heating. So long as it is wired as the diagram Charley attached - it won't cause problems with the Ignitor itself. As Nat remarked early on - the performance will be lower the higher you go over the 1.5 OHM minimum - but if reliability is suffering, its not worth the hassle.

I run the Pertronix II ignition with an MSD Blaster coil and no ballast resister and have had no problems for the past 3 years.

Rono

With the Pertronix Ignitor I units, I’ve always used the ballast resistor to the coil.  It’s the Pertronix Ignitor II and III units that I install without using the ballast resistors.  Raising or elevating the coil so it’s simply higher and resting on Bakelite or a similar heat dissipating material may help to keep some of the intake manifold heat from transferring to the coil.  There are several Thunderbirds currently being driven around that moved their coils to the firewall which alleviated coil issues in those instances.  Probably didn’t fix the root cause but at least this gets around the original problem of the coil overheating to the point of failure.

I also had a bad rebuilt alternator this spring.  It was allowing the battery to discharge while driving, then it would not crank very easy when it died or I had to restart it.   I though the low voltage wa causing the ignition to loose voltage when the battery got low at that time. 

We are taking the bird to the Lone-Star Round-up in Austin on April 13th, so I have to get this sorted out.

I had a hot stall issue with a brand-x customer car with Pertronix1.   We had to add a resistor to the coil. That car has worked perfect since.

Coils/Pertronix/Pertronix ll/Pertronix lll/Volts/Amps/Olms what does it all mean and why do I care?

You care because you want your car to run. Two many AMPS heat up the coil and kill it.

If you have points and a condenser OR a Pertronix (basic ignitor) then you MUST have a coil to support it. A  coil that has AT LEAST a 1.50 Olm resistance with a ballast resistor.

The ballast is wired so it is powered and then it provides power to your coil AFTER THE START POSITION of the ignition switch is released and then placed into ON. TWO SEPERATE CIRCUITS that both provide power to the coil through the ignition switch. One to start with high voltage (amps) one to run with reduced voltage/amps (via the ballast resistor)

Pete