hot coil

Guy's,
Just put my engine back in my boat and took it out yesterday. Runs great in the driveway. took her out yesterday for the first time. Everything is going good for about 15 minutes and it just died. I lifted motor box and wiggled all of the wires and nothing. did it again and she fired up. Took it home and ran it at the pier for awhile and all good. Went out for another ride and she died again. Got her started again and put her on the lift. I ran it there for about 30 minutes and reached down and touched the coil and it was to hot to keep my fingers on. The engine temp was at 143. My tach was not working were I found the gray wire had not been hooked up. My questions are

1. Should a coil ever get so hot that you cant touch it?
2. Would the gray wire that runs from the neg. post on the coil to the dash make the coil overheat if it was not hooked up?

the coil is horizontal but that is how it has always been. the gray wire does go to the tach.

Did you make any other changes to the wiring or ignition when you were re-installing the engine? Is the coil oil filled?

Coil doesn’t tell me much. I wrote down all of the writing off of the coil and googled it but it led to nothing. (IT WAS MADE IN CHINA)Looked at the wiring compared to old pictures that I had taken and wiring diagrams from CCFan and it all looks good. I discovered that my distributer cap gasket has deteriorated. i am going to order a new one.

Double check that the ballast resistor is getting 12v on the in side and it should only be putting out around 9v to the coil.

My coil did this when I wired the electronic conversion the way the directions said to.(jumping the ballast resistor giving the coil 12v) Ended up that I had to run it through the ballast resistor then everything was fine.

Is it necessary to use a ballast resistor if you are running a newer coil? The guy at the local marine shop that had worked on my boat for the PO said it wasn't necessary, that I could jump the purple and red wires together. That made no sense to me. I ordered a ballast resistor this morning from whitelake.

Gary S wrote: Bret it does not matter how new or old the coil is.It does matter what the coil manufacturer says to use

Exactly! If the coil is internally resisted or needs the external ballast resistor. If you run a point set or have a EI conversion will also make a difference.