The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay spark at the coil, but not at the spark-plug wire

Hi everybody. Thanks for your suggestions. Here are my updates (short story is the truck still does not start).

First and foremost (for my wife), I got a load of dirt by another means.

1) I couldn't replace the coil wire to the distributor cap because nobody locally has one.
2) Ditto for the distributor cap and rotor, but I've ordered them. The existing cap and rotor look good to me, though.
3) I tried the trick of jiggling the points open with a screwdriver. Here are the results:
a) The first time I didn't realize I was supposed to disconnect the coil wire to the cap, so it was still plugged in. I accidentally touched the distributor shaft and the points arm at the same time, and they sparked (not at the points, but at the screwdriver).
b) After re-reading the suggestion, I disconnected the coil plug wire (black rubber) from the cap and held the coil plug wire terminal near a ground and jiggled the points open/closed. There was a spark at the end of the coil plug wire. (Does this mean my coil plug wire is good?)
c) Then I tried the trick of using a jumper directly from the battery to the input of the coil and jiggled the points. This also produced a spark at the end of the coil plug wire.
d) With this jumper in place, I tried starting it. Did not work.

So my current situation is I've ordered a dist. cap and rotor and am waiting for them. I think I'll tow the truck home and work on it here.

Any other suggestions? Keep in mind, the truck ran fine during my drive to the dirt place, then it died and won't restart. So it seems something happened suddenly, maybe due to jostling while driving on a bumpy road.

Thanks.