Got towed home yesterday need engine help

[Silverstreak02]

I finally got a chance to work on the Cobra tonight. It's definitely an ignition problem and I believe the distributor may be the culprit. I'd like to run this by everyone to get opinions.

I hooked my inline spark tester into the #1 spark plug and motored the engine. The light in the tester would light one time as soon as the engine started to turn over and then nothing. I tried this several times with similar results except for once the light came on several times and the engine tried to start. As soon as the light went out the engine stalled. I moved the tester to another spark plug and had similar results.

I checked for power and ground being supplied to the distributor with a test light and the light came on. I tried to get power at the output of the distributor to the coil, but I didn't get any. I think the distributor has to be spinning for this power, but I'm not sure. I moved my spark tester to the coil wire and disconnected the power and ground wire for the coil from the distributor. I ran a hot (12vdc) wire directly to the hot side of the coil and touched the ground wire to ground. Each time I touched ground the light in the tester came on. Since this was consistent I believe it means the coil is working correctly when it has a known power supply. I reconnected the power lead from the coil to the distributor and tried starting the engine again. As the engine was turning over I grounded the coil ground wire to the block. Sometimes the light would come on and other times it wouldn't. As expected the engine tried to start if I got several sparks in a row.

I believe this proves it is an ignition problem and the coil seems to be working correctly. That gets me down to the distributor not supplying power to the coil on a reliable basis. I plan to call Mallory tomorrow and ask if they can test and repair my Max-fire, but want to ask you guys if my troubleshooting and conclusion is correct. Is there anything else I can try? Am I out to lunch? Thanks for any comments.

Jeff