75 duster slant six weak spark

Amongst the thousands of posts about weak/no spark, here is my problem. 75 duster slant six/automatic. A/C. It has spark, but its very weak and won't start/fire. I'll be perfectly clear with ALL of you, I'm no electronics wizard, I just plain don't understand it enough to troubleshoot under the hood. I can wire in a tachometer and install a Crane Fireball ignition (which is removed and disconnected since the Crane coil took a dump) so I reverted back to stock electronic ignition and factory coil (which ran before installing the Crane stuff) but I can't find broken stuff if it carries electricity.

Facts:
Outside temperature (11/13/14): near freezing Fahrenheit (and now snowing i might add). When the car stopped running it was around 65-70 degrees about a month ago.
The car is getting plenty of gas. You can see it and smell it inside the Holley 1945 carb.
The starter turns the motor over just fine. No hitches or skips in the starter.
Factory coil. Car has just over 70,000 original miles.
NGK plugs gapped to .035"
Brand new 4 blade ballast resistor (more on that in a minute)
Taylor 8mm plug wires about a year old (car is short tripped only, never taken out of town)
Cleaned up distributor cap (was the same one that was used on the Crane system). Brass lugs inside the holes
Reman Cardone brand distributor arrived last week and installed few days ago. (the old one had too much play in the shaft and seemed to ground out the reluctor gap, either way i wasn't getting a pulse as noted by the indicator on the Crane hi-6 box as it should have pulsed the LED indicator light while cranking. Plus you could feel the slight slop in the shaft bushings).

Odd things about the weak spark: I had removed the spark plug wire from cylinder 3 and put brand new NGK resistor plug on it and grounded this to the valve cover bolt (too lazy to remove the NGK spark plug installed in the engine; its faster this way). My son gets in the car and turns the switch to run, the spark plug gets a HUGE white spark right before he hits the starter and the engine cranks. When the starter turns the motor over, the spark reduces to a very small white dot (not a huge streak of lightning) on the tip of the spark plug.
On occasion, you'll hear the engine almost fire right when you turn the key from run to start but then it just cranks without firing. Its almost like the ignition system is hotter in run than in start.

Ballast resistor. Following the test listed here please note i have my resistor oriented the exact same way in the picture. The top ohm reading is 1.6 ohms and the bottom reading is 5.7 ohms. Does this matter that they are flip-flopped?

I did some basic testing of the circuits to the coil and heres what I have:
Brown wire to coil positive stud when key is turned to RUN: 2.05 Volts
Brown wire to coil positive stud when key is turned to Start/crank: 9.50 Volts
Ohm reading from positive stud on coil to center/top of coil (key turned off): 8.66 ohms (meter set to 20K ohms)
Ohm reading from positive stud on coil to negative stud on coil (key turned off): .002 (meter set to 2K ohms)
Battery voltage: 12.42 Volts

What this tells me is that there is a 2.92 voltage drop between the battery and the coil stud, however i've read anything under 10 and theres a problem, so I'm assuming SOME type of drop is normal?

67Dart273 had quoted that "Ignition "run" (IGN1) is ONLY present with key in run and NOT in start

The ONLY source of ignition voltage in "start" is the "bypass" circuit, or "IGN2". This is a brown wire, comes off the switch, goes through the bulkhead connector, and to the coil+ side of the ballast. So if the switch, the connector, or the bulkhead connector becomes corroded, you can lose that start voltage."

Is it likely the bulkhead connector causing all this despite the ballast having the top/bottom flipped and possibly the coil being bad? I have no idea what the ohm readings are trying to tell me, they are just numbers. Are they good/bad?