Originally Posted by
LarrBeard
If you still have wire directly connected to the battery and no spark:
A. Look at the (-) terminal of the coil with a meter while you are cranking. When the points are open, the (-) terminal should read 12-volts. When the points close, the terminal should read ground. If you always read ground - either the points are not opening and closing or you have an open coil. Since you are back to a real distributor and it ran for a bit - I don't suspect that it just went bad. It was running on the electronic ignition distributor...sorry if I didn't make this clear
B. If you are back to vehicle wiring - not just a direct wire - and you have 12-volts on the (+) terminal while you crank - I suspect a coil issue even more!
This just checks the primary side, there is a way to check the secondary (high voltage) side:
The old redneck way to test a coil was to touch a clip lead on the (-) terminal to ground with the points open. If the top of the coil had 12-volts and that didn't get you spark - the coil was bad.
Bubba would have Junior hold the lead that went to the center of the distributor cap and if Junior jumped and cussed - you probably had a good coil.
With all of the shyte you are seeing - it's about time to swap out the coil for a known good one.I have replaced the coil since I shorted the battery, that doesn't guarantee its good but it is the one that was in the jeep when it was running 2 days ago.
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