THE CURE !!! After a number of more hours of chasing our tail we found, but did not fix, the problem. I hooked up the (+) side of the battery directly to the ballast resistor, as suggested much earlier. That gave us a weak but consistent spark. Truck would start then spit, spudder, and die. I kept thinking....how in the heck do you get more voltage/current to the coil than a large gauge wire directly to the battery. Then, I guess by chance, I measured the run wire to the ballast resistor that was disconnected from the resistor with switch off. It measured 20 ohms to ground. So here we go again. Disconnected the connector on the fire wall and the 20 ohm to ground is inside the compartment. Again hooked to the ballast resistor directly to the battery but removed the run wire. The engine came to life and idled just fine. So, somewhere between the connector on the fire wall and the ignition switch and maybe the ignition switch there is a 20 ohm short of the run circuit wire. Ran out of daylight so it's left to fix another day.
You guys may see this sort of problem every day but for me, it goes in the "I don't want to do this again book". Who would think to disconnect the run circuit wire from the ballast resistor and measure its resistance to ground.
