79 omni won't start-help!
 

Last night I went to start my car to go to work and besides doing a lot of cranking I'm not getting anything out of the old girl. Not a sputter, a stumble, or anything. I should mention that this car has about 60,000 miles on it and was in a garage most of its life. It sat for three years before I picked it up a couple weeks ago. When I parked it two days ago it hadn't given me any trouble in the past two weeks of steady driving. Besides sitting through a pretty nasty rain storm, nothing happened to it since I parked it.

I pulled the cover off the carb and watched it squirt gas when the pedal was pushed. I also hooked up a meter to the ignition coil where it feeds to the distributor. When the key is in the on position, it was getting about 7 volts. When the engine was cranked, it was jumping too fast for the meter to get a reading. I replaced the ignition coil and the resister on the firewall and I'm still just cranking with no results. The car's got gas in it and a good battery. The starter is turning the engine over. It doesn't appear to be flooded as I don't smell excessive gas.

The new ignition coil says it doesn't require and external resister. Does that mean I have to remove the external resister? Is that the white one on the firewall? What's going on here? It seems like I have power and gas, so why won't it start? Help me please-this is my work car and I don't make money unless it moves by tonight.

EDIT: Is the wire from the ignition coil to the distributor supposed to have resistance? I ran a continuity test on it and instead of the beeping I'm supposed to hear, I get a reading that there is some resistance. If there isn't supposed to be anything special about this wire, it may just be busted. Also, are there any sensors that could go bad that might cause this? Thanks.

what kind of coil did you replace the factory one with. im thinking because of the rain storm comment that maybe it has a short somewhere.

What information do you need about it? The only difference between it and the old one is that this one says it doesn't require an external resister. The old one said that it did.

Update: I am getting 12 volts at the distributor but still no spark. I pulled the distributor apart only to find that the distributor pickup assembly and rotor were all corroded to hell and back. Not only that, but in the process of unplugging the distributor pickup assembly plug (with the key in the on position) the engine actually jerked-almost as if a sparkplug had fired. I've got the parts coming in tomorrow and hopefully that takes care of it. Wouldn't be the first time I've gotten my hopes up troubleshooting an old car though. Any other thoughts would be appreciated.

Oh, and looking around on google revealed that the firewall resistor isn't necessary with a ignition coil that doesn't require one. I bypassed it with a straight piece of wire for now.