Do we have any electrical system guru’s on here?

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by fastpace

...that is powered at both the start and run positions of the ignition.

Most charging lamp feeds to the VR come off the ACC circuit of the ignition switch and not the START or IGNITION circuits of the switch. The reason is that you don't want the feed to the lamp back-feeding to the starter solenoid. If you do that, you'll know very quickly. The easy way to tell on your particular Cobra and wiring system is to just pull your coil wire so the engine won't start, turn the ignition ON and the charging lamp comes on, now crank the engine and see if the charging lamp goes out. If it does, then the feed to it is coming from the ACC circuit(s) of the ignition switch which gets cut out when cranking. Another way to check is to just pull the wire off the starter solenoid and try and start the car. Of course it won't crank, but watch your charging lamp and if it goes out then you know it's fed from the ACC pole of the switch which is getting cut out. Now, every ignition switch in the world doesn't cut the ACC circuit out while cranking, but you get the idea.