I have an extra hei i will send you if you need it. $20 plus ride.

They have a tool called a vacuum tester gauge. You just pull the trigger back like a caulking gun and it does the sucking for you. It even has a hand dandy little gauge on there to let you see if your loosing pressure when you shouldn't be.

Yeah, the Mity-vac. It's worth it's weight in gold.:D Good for checking vacuum, pulling a vacuum, bleeding brakes, etc.

sounds like a bad pickup to me!

Well I'm buying ducks distributor off him, but while I'm waiting for that I'll change the pickup...if that doesn't work then I have a different distibutor on the way so I can rule out anything being wrong with the distributor.

Thanks again duck.

Have you tried running a temorary hot wire directly from the positive battery post to the positive distr. connection. I had some extra wire ends, that made it easy to plug my jumper in on the distr. and used a clip type connector for the battery end.
Battery and amperage are two entirely different components of electricity. I also had adequate voltage going to my coil, but not enough amp's. I also went through all the same steps you have before I ran the jumper. I should have tested my amperage to begin with but it has been to long ago that I took basic electricity and electronics and also a long time time since I have used it.

I guess I could try that..it just seems so weird that it worked for so long before and JUST work a couple days ago and then in a matter of hours it didn't work and still won't.

I repaired the white wire to my dizzy, truck ran fine, that was at the end of May. Today I found it melted again, this time I ran the 12 g wire directly from a ignition post on the fuse block to the dizzy with a inline fuse. Fired right up, should have ran the new wire the first time.