[decooney]

If you decide to rule out the pickup coil, it's easy. Grab an ohm meter, and run it across the two pickup wires coming out of the distributor. See if it measures between 500-700 ohms. I just rechecked the MSD site, and that still seems to be the current spec.

I've seen two (2) MSD pickup coils go bad and one was mine. I keep a spare pickup coil in my trunk tool bag in case mine or others go out on friends cars on drives. Cheap, and easy to check or replace if needed. And, of course the MSD boxes go bad occasionally but mostly due to too much vibration or too much heat. I moved my MSD box inside the cockpit of the car away from any engine or exhaust header heat. No problems.