Took a look at the harnesses. Didn’t have to go very far. The bulkhead connector slot mating with the engine harness terminal going to the alternator main terminal (heavier gage black wire) is melted. Looks like it happened a while ago and someone took a new engine harness and just went for it plugging it in. Sort of remarkable there was a connection there at all, the bulkhead is distorted a bit, small chunks of plastic are missing, the bulkhead terminal is corroded.

As coincidence...I had noticed as I took it apart a few weeks back that the spot for the coil high tension cable on the distributor cap was burnt, I thought it was strange that someone would use that cap and I simply went ahead and replaced it. So who knows what happened and how it was set up before.

The heavy gage red wire coming out of the column as part of that ignitions switch harness is clean, but the plug looks like it also had been melted a bit at one time and someone cleaned up the hole with a drill and a file before putting the terminal back in. There are also a couple of splices in the cables coming from the ignition switch, to the smaller gage red wires. The harness connector connection was just probably “OK” for that wire.

So I just stopped there. Have some work to do replacing a few things before trying the whole thing again. I also am going to (gasp) switch it over to electronic ignition while I am at it. I have had solid performance across a dozen or so cars from the Mopar ECU’s, and now the JEGS blue ECU (still have some old made in America Mopar units as well). I know points work great, but I have an electronic distributor all set up and ready to go that I had been keeping for a while with a nice curve and solid performance, time to use it. Plenty of time to work on the car, can’t go anywhere with all that is going on, no car shows or cruises for a bit.

Thanks to all!!