This has been challenging!
My plug wires are in the correct order. I wish that was the issue, darn it.
I'm sure there is something wrong in my distributor now.
With help from a friend (he literally is a rocket scientist... he's got stuff on Mars!) who came by, we determined and ruled out timing and carbonation. I did remove the Solex carb and put my rebuilt Carter back on. It had clogged so that's why I put the other one back on. For some reason I just like the Carter better. That's as far as we got that day.
After my last post I "for sure" thought I had a bad NEW coil, even though I think that's very rare. But, the "new new" coil was doing the same thing... weak spark. The problem was that I was testing it without a condenser in the circuit (when isolating it from the distributor).
Next my friend helped out from his home by rigging up a way for me to test my coil independent of the distributor, as he agreed that I should see a hefty spark, one to be careful with!
I added a photo of his set up. (Ballast resistor added to his coil) Sure enough, when I went by - I clearly saw a nice big blue spark jumping in his makeshift contacts, that reminded me of a mini Tesla coil.
I brought that entire setup home, reconnected it and duplicated it to make sure of the connections. Then I disconnected his coil and jumped in my coil, making sure it was completely disconnected from any vehicle wiring.
And...
I got a NICE BIG BLUE SPARK! ;)
Now the only thing I could think of was my condenser, again. So I disconnected his high voltage cap and stuck in my condenser.
And, I again got a nice big blue spark.
With that said, I'll go back out to the garage today and poke around with my distributor and double check what I thought I already checked.
Still this is good news I think, although it seems this should be simple stuff and I wonder why I'm so challenged by it?? Too much wine? Too many woman? (Well no that's not happening)
In the meantime, I ordered a new electronic ignition type distributor from Kaiser Willys in case I can't figure out the distributor issue. It seems they have mostly good reviews but I really hate replacing my original stuff with Chinese "goods."
There's my update.