It's not as simple as that.
During cranking, the ballast resistor (or resistive wire) is bypassed so that the coil receives full battery voltage (which could be as low as 9 volts).
After the key is released, the ballast is switched back into circuit to reduce the voltage to 9 volts.
Note that the ballast resistor, in theory, has to be a specific value to suit the coil if it is to drop the battery voltage to the right value for the coil. In practice, it may not be too critical as there are a number of other vasriables, e.g. state of charge of the battery, battery voltage owing to age, alternator charge voltage/current, etc.
Ron (not a mechanic or auto elec)



				
				
				
					
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