Thank you all very much for your replies and for the time you took to help me. Bartamos, to answer your questions:
1. You did read my words correctly.
2. I wasn't totally guessing, I wouldn't have know where to start. I found some troubleshooting steps online that told me how to use a multimeter to test the ignition coil and was able to conclude that the coil wasn't bad but that it was downstream in the distributor so I assumed it was the magnetic pickup.
3.I went back and compared how I had it installed to the instructions and found that I made a really stupid mistake. I tried to follow
these instructions. There are three wires that come out of the distributor, red, black and brown. According to the instructions I found in the PDF it said to hook the red wire up to the positive terminal on the coil, the black wire up to a good body ground and the orange (yes it said orange not brown but I assumed that the brown one was the same as the orange) to the negative terminal on the coil. The way that I have it connected is black goes to ground on the firewall but both the red and the brown go to the negative terminal on the coil (therein lies my stupid mistake). Also, I took the 12 gauge wire that was coming from the starter, going through the resistor and to the positive side of the old coil and removed the resistor and ran it to the positive side of the new coil. Finally, there is a smaller wire that runs from the ignition switch to the positive side of the coil.
4. I did use what came with the distributor
5. Thank you very much for helping me go back through this in detail. I believe that I found the issue but if you see something else I did wrong, please let me know.
Given the way that I hooked it up I can't believe that it actually ran for a little while. I'll get the replacement and wire it in correctly this time and update you all when it is done.
