[David Ray]

Pickup coil has single windings wire to stranded wire interface problems, and, second issue might be the actual strands are broken at the terminals in the plastic connector block that interacts into the end of the HEI module. Since the wires have to actually bend as the vacuum advance operates, it is possible that every strand of the wire at the terminal is broken, and only making intermittent contact in certain positions. If you can, set the ohm meter up to read the resistance, and wiggle the wires at the connector block. If the strands are broken, the reading will go bonkers as you wiggle the wires.

For the high tension leads, red to white, ACCEL, 500 ohms is good, that is within their guidelines. From red to coil wire terminal, the 8,950 also sounds like what they used to have, BUT, the coil is still dead cold, not at operating temperature. to properly test the coil, it needs to be hot, at ops temps. To do that, find a good auto parts store that has an off vehicle electrical tester that runs coils on it, load it up, and let it run, get it to temperature, and see if it is good.

That ACCEL coil is one that was made at Andover Industries, Andover, Indiana, at that time, THE best coil producer in America. It is very likely that coil is still very, very nice in condition.

Reading your timing specs, I assume the IDLE timng is 10 INITIAL, plus 9 vacuum advance, sourced on full manifold vacuum, and NOT ported vacuum. Is this correct?

For the large HEI, points distributor springs interchange, and there are tons of them all over the place. Example: ZZ springs LOOK like they are very light tension when they are just sitting on the bench, but as they are mouned to the pins, they stretch a great deal, and become very high tension. This radically slows down the mechanical curve, to start the ZZ curve at 1,300 or so RPM's, and limits it to 5,500 RPM's. Reason: The ZZ has the vacuum advance sourced on ported vacuum, which causes it to come in upon acceleration, not the right way to do it, but that is the way the EPA had GMPP run the distributors, so the engines can get certified to sell. Vacuum advance is NOT supposed to be a second acceleration advance curve, and GMPP had to slow the mechanical advance curve extremely down to dead slow, to allow the vac adv to work on ported, which is the wrong way to do it.

So, in the case of the ZZ, the mechanical advance was slowed down to allow the ported vacuum advance to operate, but it really doesn't work well that way. Limiting the vacuum advance to a reasonable number of degrees, running it on full manifold vacuum, and speeding the mechanical curve up with softer springs, starting at 850/900 RPM's, limiting to 3,000/3,100 RPM's.....does.