Quote:

I tried using 2 jumper wires straight from pos and neg at the coil to the pos and neg at the battery and cranked it, it wont fire the plugs like this for some reason.



If you ran the two jumpers as stated above, you prevented the breaking of the circuit on the negative post of the coil. Hence, no break, no spark! Retry the jumper pos battery post to pos terminal of coil. Negative battery post to the coil holding bracket or one of the bolts, not the NEGATIVE COIL TERMINAL. 4.5 volts at the coil is low. Give it another try with the setup I mentioned.
Ron