Help needed diagnosing ignition problem Options

[ewok of death]

I have a '75 914 1.7L that I've had for almost a year now. I got it mostly as a 'project' car but I have practically no mechanical experience, and have just been essentially learning as I go. I very rarely drive it, but last week, I was driving it home it suddenly cut out. After stopping, the engine would turn over, but would not start. Upon later inspection with the tow truck driver by holding the HT cable over the engine cover, I determined there was no spark.

So after scratching my head and poking around inside the engine bay a few times, I have come to the following conclusions:

- The ignition coil is a Accel (Super Coil I believe). The resistance across the LT terminals is 3ohms, and the resistance from the battery terminal to the HT terminal is 13k ohms or so (though I may not have gotten an accurate reading and will recheck this in a bit).

- There is a Pertronix Ignitor system in the distributor cap. These I hear are pretty reliable, but the way it was wired was pretty funky. The lead from the battery was connected to the - end of the coil, as was the black wire from the pertronix unit, and a mysterious blue wire that I assume is the tach? The red wire from the pertronix unit was connected to the + terminal on the coil, as well as two black leads (what are these?).

I switched the wiring around so the battery lead, the red ignitor wire, and the supposed tach wire connect to the + terminal, and the black wire from the ignitor and the other two black wires are connected to the - terminal. I read somewhere that the pertronix would work if its polarity was reversed, but would eventually burn out so this seemed like a possibility. Anyway, car still would not start. I tried disconnecting the mysterious wires as well, with the same results.

Then, just now, I went out to measure the voltage at the input of the coil. It was 8.5V or so, which seems about right. I was about to measure the voltage at the - end of the coil, but smelled smoke and noticed that it was coming from beneath the distributor cap, and lo and behold, the pertronix is burnt. Now I am wondering, was the pertronix really burnt out, or did I just destroy it by messing around with it...?

My next step is going to be to test the coil itself by momentarily grounding and ungrounding it directly, but I need to get some leads first.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice, or if they have had similar issues...

Also, if I want to pull out the distributor and install a new pertronix, how can I remove it? Or should I try to replace it with the distributor in place? I assume if I remove it I'll have to redo the timing, or is there a way to avoid that?