Put a 440 back in the car after someone else pulled and didn't mark all the wires. I have msd 6al and dist. I attached the larger black wire that is supposed to go to the alt to the negative side of the coil. After moving it back to the alt. the car is still not firing. I have one of the plugs pulled. So I put a ohm meter on the + and - terminals. The readings are bouncing all over the place from about 1.4 to 30 something. Is the coil bad or is this normal?

 

I hope this was with no power applied, if so you may have damaged the meter.

If the coil was isolated I'd say check your meter battery strength or try another. Bouncing around should not happen while checking resistance.

 

Put a brand new battery in it. No power was on.

 

Put another battery in. If I set it on 200 it bounces around from 1.1 to 1.4 If I put it on 2k or up to 200k reads 0.

 

Positive to negative should be around 1 ohm, positive to center post should be around 10,000 ohms. There should be no bouncing unless it is oxidized or your meter didn't have enough time to settle.

Do you have a 20 ohm setting, or small scale less than 2000 ohms.

 

200 is the lowest setting then 2K

 

Set on 200 it gave me a reading of .9 from + to - terminals. I tired lower on the terminals and gave me a constant reading. From positive to center post got a 5 when set on 20K. Would that translate to 10,000

 

20K is 0 - 20,000 ohms. (K = 1000).

5.0 would be 5,000 ohms.

Sounds like your getting it now.

Best to find out manufacturers acceptable range as 10,000 stated before is a big ballpark. Could be much less or much more.

 

As eluded to above, LOW resistances are difficult to measure because of CONNECTION problems, and in this day and age, many inexpensive meters have PLATED probes which do NOT lend themselves well to these low measurements.

You must be careful, FIRM, and STAB the probes FIRMLY into the terminal you wish to measure. Measurements can be affected by other components, so it's best to measure components when disconnected from other parts

If you go to the MSD site, there's a whole deal on troubleshooting their products