OK so spent this holiday off and on investigating why my stock motor was getting no spark. Finally found that the small, black, positive wire going to the coil inside the distributor housing had been cut by the spinning internals.

Pulled the distributor and patched that wire up. Decided to replace the coil with a spare I had just to cover my bases. Fired her up and BOOM plenty of current ........... which immediately burned up my Pertronix because I put the wires back on the coil backwards.

Dam-it.