Ford Mustang: OT: marine 454 no spark from coil

sorry for the cross post.

A friends got an old speed boat (think 70's classic style speed boat)
with a 454. He's been working on it recently and had the engine out.
After putting it back in and hooking up all the wires the way they were
before (known working). It wont spark... No spark coming out of the coil
when the wire is held near the block, and the engine turned over.

He's replaced the coil, and condenser, and we've tried changing ground
points, and making sure all the wiring is connected and more or less
sound. There isn't a WHOLE lot of wiring to this thing. At one point we
had the key in the on position while working on something and the new
coil was pretty hot, so we thought we might have had the wires on the
coil reversed, after switching them the coil went back to just being warm.

Then we did some informal circuit testing (read: looked for some spark
when grounding the wires that go to the coil terminals) the coil is most
definitely getting current (spark from the negative wires when touching
them to the block, spark from the positives when touching them to the
positive coil terminal), but nothing is coming out of it where it matters

Anyway what are some likely candidates? Bad ground somewhere is my
guess... two bad coils and/or two bad condensers doesn't seem likely.
Current isn't getting to the distributor if the coil isn't sending it so
that's out of the troubleshooting loop right? The starter certainly is
getting current (turns the engine just fine) and there's a little
solenoid (not the starter solenoid) that is in the circuit between the
key and the coil... this could be bad, but then if it's the problem why
is the coil getting current when the key is on?

Any thoughts much appreciated.

If the coil is heating up, that means there's current going through it.

Use a meter or test light (to grd) at the neg side of the coil as you open
and close points.

if you never see 8 - 12 volts to ground, and there's only the wire to the
dist hooked up there, then something in the dist is shorted.


12V - - ballast res -- coil pos| coil neg - - dist points/condenser- - grd
| - - start sol- - |