It sounds like the wire that used to go to the ballas resistor has come loose.
The Roadster has two circuits to fire the coil. The first circuit is for
starting only and it bypasses the ballast resistor to give the coil full 12
volts during startup. The second circuit works the rest of the time and goes
through the ballast resistor. The ballast resistor drops the voltage to 6
volts at the coil to protect the points. When you swap to a Gary Boone
distributor you can eliminate the ballast resistor and hook it's power wire
directly to the coil. It sounds to me like the ignition circuit is working but
the ballast resistor (run) circuit is not. Use a volt meter and determine if
one of the two wires hanging near the coil has 12 volts with the ignition in
the on (run) position and no volts with the ignition off. If this is the case
then hook that wire to the 12 volt input on the coil. You will also need the
wire that supplies 12 volts during startup (cranking) hooked to the input on
the coil. If they aren't both hooked up then the motor won't start running
while cranking. This baffled me for a while because it wouldn't fire until
after I moved the ignition switch from start to run.
> if I kept the
>turned the ignition key towards the start position (there is a small
>range where the starter will not quite engage) it would run fine. Very
>strange as I have been driving it off and on for a
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