Troubleshooting Charging

[olebluecelo70]

Hello. I have a 1970 100 with a 240 that I bought 2 and a half years ago. About six months ago I replaced my alternator, voltage regulator and battery. About two weeks ago My ALT light started coming on. There was no apparent symptom aside from the light. I ride my bike more often during the warm months so after a few days of no driving, I tried to start the truck and got cranking from the starter, but no ignition. The cranking also slowed indicating loss of battery power. When my wife got home I used her car to jump it, and while the starter cranked with full force again, still no ignition. I pulled my spark plugs and cleaned them and afterwards was able to achieve ignition. I was able to start it again once, before The battery was drained again. Today I tried to jump it again, and again had trouble getting fire. I pulled the distributor cap and cleaned the corrosion off the contacts and gently cleaned the contact points on the rotor. By chance I touched the housing of the ignition coil and felt it was hot. after cleaning the distributor, I was able to achieve ignition, and a voltmeter reading at the battery was about 13.5, which is congruent with test results from when I replaced the alternator before. I'm not an expert mechanic, although neither am I incapable, but I'm not sure what all this means. I think it's obvious I need to perform a tune up, but is there something I'm overlooking?

[basketcase0302]

Stop by the welcome mat when you get a chance:
http://www.fordification.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1
I'd say there might be two different issues here. First I'd put a load tester on the battery, (any discount/advance/pep boys/oriellys will do this for free). It also sounds like there might be a dead short somewhere causing the battery to drain, (one way to search for this is to pull the fuses one at a time).
Then I'd check the voltage at the + on the coil wire, (have your wife turn the switch on and off-you don't want to leave the switch on for long). With the original resistance wiring in place I believe you'll see somewhere around 8-10 volts-12 volts here will fry the points in a short time. Any less than 8 volts says your resistance wiring might be shot-time to run a new wire from the ignition switch. Then I'd try to look for fireworks under the hood at night, ("pot calling the kettle black here") as i just had an issue with my coil a few weeks ago.
Any hairline crack will cause the coil to short out causing those symptoms. Throwing a new coil and new points on it is usually good cheap troubleshooting IMO that's also equivalent of tuning/performance work.

[olebluecelo70]

Thanks for the input. I'm hoping the rain here will break soon and give me some time to work on it later this week. I'll post again once I've had a chance to try your suggestions.