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Hey so I am looking under the hood and trying to find the other half of that wire! I mean, this is silly, it was hooked to the thick yellow cloth wire at the bottom of this pic, and gravity works pretty well in my driveway, so the other half of that wire should be just south of where it used to be....nope... I have looked everywhere for the other half! I am trying to figure out what the big yellow wire comes from, I think that it is the main ignition wire best I can tell, where would that come from on my car? I am looking in the books that I have but it is slow going and I figured that yall would know right off. Thanks, Steve, So close, yet, so far away.

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IT IS THE MAIN IGNITION WIRE!!! I have no juice to ANY ignition parts now and the fuel pump is tied in to it also so I bet that was the problem with my suspect spark to start with, was that suspect Blue connector! So where does the ignition wire start from? I am consulting the books but have not found it yet.

If we're talking a yellow wire in ign coil circuit, that comes directly from ign switch. It's usually the only wire on one of the terminals on switch. The other side of coil goes to dist directly with a short usually black wire. Any other wire on that same ground side terminal will be from the Overdrive if your car has one.

Packard V8 brought up a very good point. If you have the type distributor with a short 2-3 inch cloth covered flex wire inside distributor between points and an outside terminal, those are notorious for causing trouble after any work. The fabric rots and falls away when disturbed and usually somewhere hidden, the wire will ground out.

No cloth in my Auto-lite setup, maybe that is why someone switched it over from the stock Delco setup at some point. My two wires that come from the Dash push button go to each side of the starter silonoid, as for the one that goes from the key switch to power to coil and the rest of the ignition system, that is what I am trying to locate now. Thanks to all, sooo close...

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Been a while since I looked but IIRC, the coil feed comes out of the main loom and exits either into the short branch feeding generator with extra wires going on to oil sender & ign coil. If not thru that path, then drops down in the bunch going to brake light switch, horn connection at base of steering column, and a couple of wires go on to coil and oil sender. If the car has OD, believe there is a third wire that will go with them.

On either path, if you have a stock ign switch and wiring power comes directly from battery feed via ammeter and a splice to ign switch. Coil is only hot when the key is to the right. The starter will crank with key in either direction but coil on only in the run position.

6v ign doesn't care about the solenoid like the 12v cars do. The only thing is if the battery is weak or solenoid & starter is really loading the system down dropping the voltage to coil, the spark may jump in open air but not be strong enough to jump the gap when plug is in the cylinder and under dense air from compression.

HH you are correct, in this pic the top right one comes from the main harness over by the generator, top left goes to the same side of the coil that the short wire that goes to the distributor does, bottom right (with the Blue connector thingy) goes to the oil pressure sending unit, and the bottom left is a thicker yellow cloth wire that went SOMEWHERE yesterday, but I cant find the other one of it!? Do you remember where that big yellow one on the bottom left goes to from there? It is towards the firewall.

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I only see 3 yellow wires listed as down in that area. One to the coil and two to the overdrive kickdown switch. There was a yellow/red in another branch of the loom to the original carburetor starter switch circuit which which must have been bypassed. The other wire to the coil on dist side (from OD) should be a green/black.

The yellow feeding the hot side of coil comes directly from the ign switch and should be the only one on the coil terminal. It will go directly into the loom and straight to the exit and then to coil.

Your ign switch should look something like this -- although may not have the light. The coil terminal will be the short one on the bottom. The yellow wire feeding the coil is 17Y on the schematic. This is an excerpt from page one and two on the 1949-50 23rd series schematic available in the literature section.

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It wound up BEING the hot wire for the coil, owen told me. So now I am at least back to where I started again!

HH, any clue what I should try next?

Not sure how much disassembly and engine checking you have done but I would start at square one again. First assumption is you have good compression since it was running.

Believe you mentioned you now have a spark. Start by removing dist cap and verifying it is strong straight out of coil in open air and seems consistent when cranking. If so, then verify where the timing is by removing the #1 plug. Make sure #1 piston is on the compression stroke and is at TDC. Note where the dist rotor is and make sure #1 plug wire is just under or is immediately before the rotor end within a couple of degrees of where the rotor is currently pointing. Verify the rest of the firing order is now proper remembering the dist's CCW rotation.

Once you are satisfied that is all good, then place a voltmeter on the yellow wire at coil to ground. Verify you have 6-6.3 volts just sitting. If not, find out why not. Crank the engine and see how much the voltage drops. If it falls below 5, that is too low or too much drop. Staying higher than 5.2-5.5 would be better. If it falls, either the battery is low, cables are too small, or a connection is dirty or bad.

Once everything looks good there, then unless you have a defective or different from the original rotor, cap, improper gap at plugs or no gas, the engine should at least give a belch or two.

On the different rotor if there is one -- did you verify the notch is in exactly the same place on both. There was a report some time back some new aftermarket rotors were offset slightly from the originals. I don't remember which dist that was found on though.