Hey thanks for the great post. The car was put together by me when I was a kid and obviously was lacking knowledge and I went with whatever was the cheapest 99% of the time. It was a pretty rad ride at 17 though. I actually did call MSD yesterday, but they were closed. I did check my voltage at the coil yesterday and it was super low like around 5 volts. I'm 99% convinced my issue is with power supply to the coil (which is mounted incorrectly and threatening to leak a PCB like substances all over my firewall). So today I did talk to Mallory and MSD and got some specs. I am going to check the actual resistance of the calibrated resistance wire and then add that to my ballast resistor which is 0.8 OHMS or actually I'll just test the whole length at once. I need at least 1.4 OHMs according to Mallory. From what I've read, I will most likely replace the cal resistance wire anyways at the engine bay fuse block with a 12 guage wire and then use the proper Mallory ballast resistor since it is greater resistance than what is required by MSD. I now know what that extra wire went to when I replaced my starter. I ended up calling IMI when I installed my starter and they asked if I was running points and they said no points, don't sorry about it. Now i know why. I'm guessing the system never functioned at 100% so I'm excited to maybe get it running better than before. I also found some other great write ups here, and potentially some wiring worse than my own.
Any advice for removing the old cal resistance wire from the engine wiring harness connection? I'm a littel scared it will be super brittle after 45 yrs. Is there a special tool? Please don't say soldering.
