The wire from the points does go to the neg. post. You may have a dead condeser. This can stop spark by grounding it or by burning the points. Also possible the coil is dead. you can check by leaving the positive hooked up, and putting a sparkplug in the high tension lead. Rest the sparkplug against ground. Then take the wire from the negative side and tap it on ground somewhere, with the key on run. This should produce a spark @ the plug. I think you should have a resisiror in the power wire to the coil. My truck has a wire with built in resistor. With out it, you will burn points and condensers like crazy ( maybe every 8 miles?) Your power at the coil should be around 9-9.5 with either a resistor wire or a balast resistor on it. Only eception I know of is when you crank it over, the starter sometimes supplies full volts (12.5) via an extra terminal, to raise the spark level and compensate for the voltage drop of the starter cranking.
