Starting Problem

[Michael C Henry]

I've had a friend in 69 that his original 390 wouldn't resart when leaving a grocery store. I pulled the plug wire and it had spark so I went on to other sources. Someone else figured it out . It had a points distributer. The condenser was giving up. It would work just long enough for me to see it spark once or twice then quit. I bought a coil condenser tester and have used it ,maybe , twise since. Also had my Cobra replica quit at a traffic light, turned out to be a bad conection between the glass fuse and contactson the glass fuse holder. Seems something is allways causing problems, but you can usually fix them.
Also any back fire or the like can damage the powervalve problem. and if you are using a original points distributor and coil , they use a lower voltage (resister) for running, and straight 12V for starting. Ford used a starting solenoid that has two small terminals one terminal was from the trigger or switch, the other terminal was the resister bypass for starting. Coil ran off resisted power when running and received full 12V when starting. Some cars had a ceramic ballast resister inline, and some years used a longer length of wire folded back and forth in the wire harness to get the desired resistance ( I parted out a 61), and some used a special wire with a higher resistance to supply the coil (pink as I remember).
If the wire that normally supplied power to the coil were seperated from power from the ignition switch source ( blown fuse ,broken or disconnected wire terminal, bad wire,etc. and yes the ceramic balast resisters can burn out and break), the engine would try to fire when cranking but but would stop when the switch was released. Do you have an original points distributor and coil, and what type of resistor are you using?