I just recently acquired a 1981 242 "race car" that has been sitting for about ten years and I'm in the process of getting it running again.

First, I'll give some background on the car. All from what I've been told from the previous owner. It was autocrossed in the late 90s, so it has a fully gutted interior minus the dash, both front seats, one is a Corbeau Sport racing seat with a 5 point harness, passenger seat is stock with a 4 point harness, full roll cage, R sport cluster and steering wheel. That's all the flashy stuff and we'll move to the engine. I know absolutely nothing about the engine internals, all I know is that it does has MSD ignition and that's the main focus of my question. I can tell that just about the whole engine harness was pulled apart and spliced together many times in strange ways and I can't figure what goes where. I have some pictures that I'll post below, but my main question if anyone knows is what exactly do I need wired to and from my MSD ignition controller and coil? Currently, when I try to crank the engine I'm getting fuel, but zero spark to the plugs or from the coil at all. Also as you can see there are tons of wires going to and from the coil that I have no idea what for. I'm basically trying to pull apart the whole harness that's in there now and remake it correctly. If anyone has any idea of what's going on, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Yes, this is a nightmare! Impossible to tell what's going on; you need to take this as auto electrics 101 and follow everything A to B to C, etc.

 

possibly a bad...

coil
wire harness
main system fuse
ignition
crank sensor
battery
grounds
supplementary fuses
the third party ignition
system computer

various other parts couple be at play as well, if not all of these items
rule out what’s good and test the rest

 

Where are you? I am from southwest virginia (Hiltons). I live in Kingsport, TN now.

All I can say about your pictures is a coil takes two wires, one in and one out. "out" goes to a set of breaker points, in this case the MSD box. The spark occurs after the ground path is broken (not what you'd expect really). This means you don't need anything to work to be able to test the coil. You can test that just with power and a wire that you can ground by hand. when you break the ground connection it should throw a spark from the coil wire.

I don't know much about the MSD, so I can't help you there.

 

It looks like you bought into a lot of fun and frustration. I would start with getting the OEM wiring diagrams and toss out the MSD until you get the engine bay wiring harness back to a point where the engine will run stock. This requires a step by step wire trace to get you back to normal. Verify what sensors have been removed or jumpered out and rewire them. Have fun as you're in for a long run.