As mentioned, check for spark.
Been a minute since I had one that old but were ballast resistors an issue in '79?


Tim

neutral saftey as said above would stop cranking.

as for the bypass, if you ran it to the wrong side of the ballast, you could have burned up the coil as it shouldn't take that many volts.

but also as said above, check for spark before throwing parts at it.

the odd part is that it ran and wasn't a problem till you tried to restart. so I would also be checking for power at the various spots you messed with as a starting point.
you might also put it in run and then jump the relay for the starter and see if it fires up, in which case it would be the start circuit to chase down.

then you killed the coil with the bypass.
the ballast resister takes the voltage down in run to about 8 volts.
by running 12 volts to it you burned it out.

there are 12 volt coils, so you can replace it with one of those, but in the future recheck which side of the ballast has 12 volts first. and only put 12 volts to that side.

Have you checked for power to the positive side of the coil?

the coil cannot run on 12 volts for long or it will die.
in run you should only have about 8 volts going to it.
I don't remember how the 4 post ballast works, but you have to only jumper the side that reads 12 volts with the key in run, not both sides.
so remove your jumpers and check voltages again to see which side reads 8 vs 12 and only jumper the 12 volt side.
or you will be getting another new coil.

or you can eliminate the ballast and use a 12 volt coil.

My advice is get rid of the add ons you did and go back to factory wiring. It worked for years and there is no reason for it not to work now. Just a suggestion.

You guys are jumping into an ongoing mess with this van.

The reason for the bypass he talks about is because there was a voltage drop between the key and the ballast resistor. The by pass was suppose to be a temporary thing until he had time to chase down the reason for the voltage drop. Apparently since the van has been starting he felt there was no need to look into the cause of his original problem, its been a few months. There has also been a big over charging issue with this van, I don't remember if that got resolved or not. Then there was a fuel pump dumping fuel into the oil pan. I believe he got that changed, but I'm unsure if he ever changed the oil.

The way the bypass has been wired, the ballast is still fully functional. The bypass eliminated all the wiring connections on the van between the key switch and the ballast, it has done nothing else..

So he is back looking for another cheap temporary fix to get it running until the next time it won't start. Not that most of us have not been in that position before, a time or two.

This is going to sound dumb, but look at the position the rotor is pointing at on the distributor, then crank the motor just a little, and see if the rotor has turned at all. The motor may have a bad timing chain. If the rotor is turning, pull # 1 spark plug out of the cylinder and see if there is compression while the motor is cranking over. .if you have compression, see if you can bump the motor so that the timing marks are lined up at "0" and look to see if the rotor is pointing at the place on the distributor cap where the wire to cylinder #1 is. If its off 1 spot, the timing chain may have slipped and it needs to be replaced. If the rotor is pointing at the place the #1 wire is, then move on.

If you have power to the coil, the problem is in the ignition system, It could be as easy as a bad coil wire from the coil to the distributor, a bad coil, or a fried electronic ignition part. The coil wire, and then the coil are the cheapest places to start. If you have something there that runs that has a similar coil wire, or coil, you could swap them over onto the van (one at a time please) and see if the van will start. If it starts, replace which ever one was bad with a new one.

If that doesn't work, your going to have to remind us what ignition system is on your van (it may or may not be original to the can), before we can move forward from here.

the coil cannot run on 12 volts for long or it will die.
in run you should only have about 8 volts going to it.
I don't remember how the 4 post ballast works, but you have to only jumper the side that reads 12 volts with the key in run, not both sides.
so remove your jumpers and check voltages again to see which side reads 8 vs 12 and only jumper the 12 volt side.
or you will be getting another new coil.

or you can eliminate the ballast and use a 12 volt coil.