Hello members.. I am new to the forum. I am in need of some technical assistance. I will start off by saying that I am not familiar with old style ignition systems with points. I understand how it works but as far as diagnosing my issue I am having some trouble. As a preface I will start off with what I had done to get the vehicle running. Initially I had to clean the carb and rebuild it to get the car running. I was running into an issue with when I would take the vehicle around a turn it would die. I removed the fuel tank and found that it was full of rust and had no sock on the sending unit. I replaced the tank and sending unit, at that time I also added a second inline fuel filter to the frame rail. I also sent the mechanical fuel pump out to get rebuilt. I changed the engine oil and it was off and running. I put probably 50 miles in total on the vehicle. I also replaced the spark plug wires as they were aged and cracking.
The vehicle was running well for a couple weeks, one day sitting outside letting it idle it sputtered and died. Since then the vehicle has yet to start. I tested for spark and wasn't getting any on cylinder 1. I cleaned the plugs as they were fouled and no change. I pulled the cap off and cranked the engine while monitoring the points in the distributor. Spark seemed weak. I replaced the points and condenser and ignition coil as the old coil secondary winding was out of ohm spec. Set points gap and cranked engine. Initially I got a back fire through the intake while cranking and thought that possibly my firing order is off. I also set ignition timing on cylinder 1 5 degrees bdc on the crank. I have verified that the rotor faces cylinder 1 on the cap. Still will not fire.
Leads me to further the rabbit hole even further... I got to thinking that maybe I am not good with the points style system. So I ordered a Pertronix 1183 negatively grounded coil style electronic ignition system. I installed it according to specified instructions. Before cranking the engine I previously had the engine set on 5 degrees bdc on the crank and turned the distributor counter clockwise and had cylinder 1 fire on the spark test light. I was really hopeful it would start but did not... I am running out of ideas to test theories even further. I can confirm that I am getting spark and am adding gas to the carb. Air,Fuel,Spark. I am trying to keep it simple. However that is proving to be hard.
Before anyone asks if I am getting spark from coil... yes. I have 12v at coil and 10.36 cranking. According to pertronix kit instructions that falls into minimum requirements. A thought I have had is maybe my spark plug wires are not compatible with this ignition system? I have great spark now that I have bypassed the ballast resistor and have 12v to coil. It's a new coil designed for 12v system.
I look forward to hearing from you guys. I know it has to be something silly I am missing.