The Ballast resister will not reduce the voltage until it gets hot. It is the heat that causes the resistance. If you are checking the resistance while the resister is cold, it will read battery voltage. With in about 30 seconds of having voltage pass through it,, the resistance should start to increase. After the resister has warmed up, you should be able to see the voltage reduction.

3 miles on a coil with 12 volts should not be enough to cook a coil, unless it was nearly junk to start with. I'm betting the coil is not your problem.

My guess is you have a different problem, but I have no idea where to start looking, given the history of the van.

At this point, I believe I would test the electronic pickup in the distributor. There is a test procedure, but I would have to look it up and don't have time to do that right now.

There is a way to test the coil as well to see if it will produce a spark, but I'm not sure how to communicate that to you. All I can say is with the old points, the negative wire off the coil grounded through the closed points. When the points were closed, the coil was energized. when the points opened, the coil would shoot off a spark. Back in those days, if you closed the points, with 12 volts to the coil, then opened the points with a screw driver on the points arm, the coil would produce a single spark spark each time you let the points close, then opened them again. That entire process of closing the points and opening them to have the coil give off a spark only takes a matter of seconds. Opening the points broke the 12 volt circuit ground and caused the coil to create a spark.

You should be able to use a test wire connected to the negative side of the coil, have a good coil wire (the one that goes to the center of the distributor cap) in the center post of the coil resting on a good ground with a little less then a 1/4" air gap to the ground, where you can easily see the spark jump. With 12 volts going to the positive side of the coil, and the test wire connected to the negative side of the coil, and the bared other end on a good ground, with a coil wire in the coil terminal, position yourself where you can clearly see the open end of the coil wire and the nearby ground (1/4" or less away), watch for the spark and remove the test wire from the ground. The spark should happen immediately. If the set up is correct, every time to connect the test wire to ground a few seconds and remove it, you should get a spark. With the motor running a 1,000 rpm, that spark is happening 1,000 times each second.

Test the coil. Test the distributer pick up. If both test good, test the plate the distributer pick up plate is screwed down to and make sure it has a good ground. if all 3 test good, the problem is likely a bad brain box for the ignition, or a wiring problem some place. .

My guess is you have a different problem, but I have no idea where to start looking, given the history of the van.

At this point, I believe I would test the electronic pickup in the distributor. There is a test procedure, but I would have to look it up and don't have time to do that right now.

Here's the second component that seams out of place and I don't see this one in the diagram at all!!!
It's obviously some sort of ballast resistor... The black wire at the top goes to the oil pressure switch and the one on the bottom goes to the choke thermostat... Is that even right?? Could this be causing an issue???
When I replaced the coil this was the only component I touched because it uses the same bolt the coil bracket does and after that the whole "overcharging issue" went away for a few minutes... Maybe it was just a coincidence but I thought I'd bring it up...

I'm pretty sure the resistor had plenty of time to warm up when checking the voltage. I had the key in the ON position for more than 30 seconds for sure and I also checked multiple times! I'll check again in a little while...
Yeah, I don't see how 3 miles of driving could've fried the new coil especially since the last coil lasted such a long time with much higher voltage... That last coil was the same coil it had when I bought the van over 12 years ago!

I don't have an electronic pickup in my distributor! It's a magnetic pickup in a relatively new distributor of which I just set the gap in... BUT the reason I was in the distributor to begin with was because it was having trouble starting one morning and after checking things over I found that the two pickup wires coming out of the distributor wire were cracked open!!! I figured they were shorting on eachother and what I did was splice them open, twist them and sealed them with some shrinkwrap and after that the van was running great! That was around the same time I discovered the overcharging issue and opened that thread a few months back...
Going back to the coil... There's no spark coming out of it and I checked with different wires! There's the 12 volts that it shouldn't have going to the positive side of it so if the coil was still good I should see spark right???

Thanks for taking the time to detail the instructions to test the coil! I'll do my best to try and understand and do that test in a little while when I go recheck the resistor!

Before I forget! Another little detail that might be related which I found strange was that when I got home from that 3 mile drive with the new coil it stalled out on me in reverse and then backfired once when I started it back up! I parked it and that was the last time it ran!
I found it strange because about 100 miles ago I spent all night tuning everything according to the manuals! I set the curb idle and fast idle correctly! I set the timing to about 12° advanced and adjusted the air/fuel mixture in the carb! That van was running so nice and still is when it's running which is why I found it strange that it backfired and that's why I mention that because it might be an important clue!

So the red highlighted area says that you "spliced them open, twisted them, and sealed them with some shrinkwrap."

You are assuming those wires that are twisted together are making good contact under that shrink wrap. If that connection is not good, you won't have any spark. By the looks of the entire wire (in the picture on your next post), I would suggest that you find a complete new replacement wire harness (or pigtail) for the wires from the coil to the pickup in the distributer. They might be available ordered through a parts store) If either of those two wires are grounding anyplace (like where they pass through the distributer housing) you will not get a spark.

The green highlighted area: That backfire and the motor dying was probably caused by the twisted wires in the shrink wrap loosing connection, or the wires shorting to ground someplace between the distributer and the coil. Replace those wires, and solve your problem.

If the distributor is shorted you won't get any signal to the control module and that means no signal to the coil... Throwing parts at this willy nilly isn't going to fix it.

If the distributor is shorted you won't get any signal to the control module and that means no signal to the coil... Throwing parts at this willy nilly isn't going to fix it.

If you did not change the wires going through the distributer to the pickup coil, you will probably be back in a couple months with the same old story.

Good luck.

happy to hear you got it back running !
electrical issues, especially ones that have my brain in overload "circuitry", have contributed to the "shinyness" on the top of my head that some of my so called friends chuckle at.
please don't get too upset, but it took me many years to finally gain the courage to bull into the electrical side of this "fun with cars" thing, and although i now have success, it can still get one's goat when something crop's up that is a [censored] to figure out.
just keep after it, and success will be yours as well, as hopefully, you have finally figured out your problem.