ignition problem.

[fritzphifer]

i have recently been asked by my boss to resurrect his 75 124. this poor creature was driven into the ground by his ex about a year ago. i have no previous fiat mechanical experience and yet somehow they still felt certain i was the man for the job. my first interest was to get the foreign little machine to talk to me so that i could do some diagnostics on it beyond the noise his ex makes trying to mimic its last moments running. after sitting for over a year i started with the obvious basics. battery fresh, 12.53 volts. 12.4 at the coil on the hot side, 12.4 out the top, 12.4 at the distributor cap. turn over engine. nothing. pull a plug wire use a plug, no spark at the gap. back to the cap. twin point ignition, one is hot the other is not.? follow these leads back from the distributor toward what would normally go to the coil, and instead we slip into the firewall and from what i can gather without pulling the dash end up at the key? here is where is am getting lost. why do i have two separate leads to the primary and secondary condensers? if they both, from what i understand about dual points, are firing to the same plug simultaneously...? where does this get is power from? is there a bus bar under the dash where the two leads are hooking up to the same coiled source. why would one have voltage and the other not? here is where is gets worse. so i get the bright idea to jump the second condenser with the first's live wire and suddenly what was my one live lead is now a lead with only 4.6 volts and the other stays around .09... new condensers have not rectified this problem. when i pull the power lead, not the ignition side but the other, (this is the marcelli coil the front of the car post is "D" i believe the firewall side of the coil's post is "A") when i pull the "D" wire from the coil i can read the voltage at 12. at that post, when i hook it back up the volts drop to 4.6. is this just a bad coil? what is the deal with the wiring though? where do these condeser/points leads head to when they come from the distributor? i know there is no fused ignition link, is there some dual point relay, or ignition wizard-ry i could be filled in on? thank you for the assistance, and i am open to an and all criticism.

[baltobernie]

You're a bold son-of-a-gun to go working on your boss' car without a manual!
Try this:
http://www.international-auto.com/fiat- ... ersion.cfm

[So Cal Mark]

the dual points don't work together, they are basically separate systems that are switched. There is about a 5degree change in timing depending which set of points is in use

[fritzphifer]

does it sound like a bad relay, or bad coil that would make the voltage drop though?