Melex 625 E controller bad?

[oncearacer52]

Solenoid resistor gets red hot with key on. I unhooked all wires on the switch side of the solenoid and all is well. I also unhooked all wires on the controller, and started hooking the controller wires one at a time. The red wire from the solenoid did nothing and the solenoid was working fine, resistor was cool. I hooked the blue wire up to the controller, from a neg. battery post. and then when I touched the red battery cable to the post it arched very badly. direct ground it seems. Would this indicate a bad controller. All wires were unhooked from the controller except the two. Also with all wires hooked up on the controller, and the battery unhooked, all were showing ground.