wiring at coil

[amycyclenut]

Hey guys, I hope this hasn't already been covered, probably has, but I didn't find anything. I'm getting ready to install the Pertronix II and and I was just looking over my current wiring at the coil. First thing the PO has the negative wire (from the distributor) going to the positive side of the coil (labeled BAT) and the ignition/power wire going to the negative side (labeled DIST). Now, the truck runs so does that mean it doesn't matter??? That seams strange. I did swap them and the truck started, so either way, truck starts.

Next, and my biggest question, is my ignition/power connection going to the coil looks like this:



The red/green (i guess that green sure looks gold to me) is connected to this white/red wire, two going into one connection. What do I do with this? Do I cut the connection off and put ring terminals on both of those white/red wires?

Last question, is if I tap into the Red/Green wire behind the ignition switch and run a wire parallel through the firewall... how do you get the wire through the firewall?? That grommet is impossible to go through.

Thanks!!

[amycyclenut]

Update, the wiring diagram shows the oil pressure light as being the White/Red Stripe, however, on mine, it's black and this seems to be correct since the light comes one when it's plugged in and not when it's unplugged. What I don't understand is why the white/red was tied into the Red/Green that goes to the coil. I separated the Red/Green and plugged directly into the coil and truck started. So I'm not really clear if the White/Red Stripe is oil pressure light or something else.

Assuming the White/Red can be removed from the equation, that leaves the backward connections at the coil and getting a new wire through the firewall.

I believe I read there is another way to bypass, but I am not really clear what it is and how it works.

[cep62]

I don't recall the wire colors and I can't quite tell from your picture ,
but what you might be seeing is the resistor wire from the run position and the standard wire from the start position .
They leave the harness separately and combine before the coil.

Also I've heard a coil can run while wired backward just not very good.

[amycyclenut]

The resister wire is supposed to be pink. I didn't find pink visually anywhere (looking under the dash), but I'm assuming it's hidden in the harness covering somewhere between the cab and engine bay? So it comes out of the ignition switch Red/Green, then to Pink, then back to Red/Green (as I understand it, which could be wrong). White/Red Stripe is supposed to be oil pressure sensor but I've already seen how things might have been altered, so White/Red Stripe could be the resistor I guess just running parallel to Red/Green??... it's coming out of the wiring harness in the engine bay and tapped into the Red/Green wire with OE style connections.

If the White/Red Stripe wire is the resister that would rock and make is super easy to by-pass, no cutting necessary. But how do I know?

[sargentrs]

Not sure about yours but here you can clearly see the big, fat, pink resistor wire on my '70 ignition switch. The blue connector is where I tapped in for my Duraspark box.

[amycyclenut]

Just to follow up on this thread, I have installed the Pertronix II and all went well. I KNOW there is a more clever way to get a second wire off the Red/Green, but what I ended up doing was basically using a butt connector and running a second wire from there to the Pertronix.

The White/Red stripe that comes off the oil pressure light, was running to the connections at the kickdown switch and then connected to the Red/Green stripe that was attached to coil. As I said earlier, the blk wire is going to my oil pressure sensor. The light comes on briefly when starting the struck, so I presume that's working.... I really have no idea why the White/Red strip was going into the coil. But, that is no longer the case and my White/Red stripe is now not connected to anything. That part is still puzzling.

Otherwise, the truck is running great, so far very pleased. And the timing of this swap was pretty good because the points looked like it was time to replace them anyway.