Show us some odd ignitions from the past

DrCharles said
You won't see 300 volts across the coil on a multimeter... the 1.5 uF cap is charged to several hundred volts and "dumped" into the coil when the SCR fires. That pulse is very short and a meter can't respond to it. Now an oscilloscope will tell a different story.
Also, if your existing points/coil ignition is doing its job, there shouldn't be any dramatic difference at idle...
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Plus/ and............the Coil HV does not show up until the engine is running. The pulse is so short and the duty cycle so short that I doubt it will show much on a meter. Even so, it well may be that the cap is bad. You could easily buy and replace it. Mouser used to fill small orders, I don't remember about DigiKey