Just got home from work, not even gonna look at it tonight, I like workin on these old cars but electrical problems kill me.

I will try a direct wire to the coil from the battery, (not convenient in trunk).

First i will check every ground. I believe there may be a bad ground somewhere.

I will keep you all posted just not tonight, I am exhausted. I know you are all on the edge of your seat LOL Have a good night!

Oak

 

Kinda in the middle of this but I am giving a quick update. I finally ran a wire straight from the coil and into the plug on the firewall, ( i cut out the ignition wire on the harness. 12 volts to the coil until I start the car.

So I stabbed the ignition (female hole inn firewall plug) after I started the car and low and behold only seven volts, so obviously the draw is on the passenger side of the car, somewhere between the plug and the ignition switch.

So you guessed it I am on my way to take the F'n instrument panel out so I can see all the feed in and out of the ignition wire, I still have a suspicion the stereo guy tapped into the igniton wire and damaged it somehow.

I have however completely disconected the stereo but I am afraid I will find a damaged wire when I take out the dash.

I hhave a few hours tonight, I will get back to you all



UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Oak

 

Maybe you have a crummy ignition switch problem. Have you tryed checking the voltage maybe on a bulb or something while the ignition is on? If its low there too maybe its the switch going. You might have a higher draw coil that should have had a relay instead of the switch.

 

I know you guys said you wanted me to let you know what it turned out to be so......Sorry I have been working at least 12 hours a day for the last 6 weeks or so, 6 days a week so not much time for the car right now...
I finally took out the dash and checked the ignition wire, it looked ok but I replaced it anyway, I had left a very small portion of the resistor wire when I hooked up the MSD stuff. I put it back together with the new wire and had just short of 12 volts, car ran good for a couple of minutes then crap crap crap again, looked in the carb and the floats looked to be stuck and flooding so I pulled the carb and the float was all out of wack (bout the 4th Holley so far since rebuild, but thats another story).
I got the carb issues resoved and ran great for over 10 minutes, turned it off and walked away for a second, came back to see how well she started,..........tirned the key and POOOF, wire fried! DOUGH!!!!!

I had left the choke wire unpluged and it hit the valve cover and POOF,

Back to the drawing board....not really. It simply fried the ignition wire all the way up. I ended up replacing it all the way thru and put it back together. Now I have 14 volts at the Coil and the car runs better than ever.

Not much time on the car now that i have it runnin again so i will keep you posted to see how it goes.

All in all I got it back together and found a fuel problem in the process,

Lookin forward to a good cruise sometime soon and some better gas mileage.

Sorry it took so long

Oak