8n coil [ quick question]

I have brain lock going, going over to go work on a 1952 8n sidemount 6volt original, what has happened is 2 young people who knew nothing about it saw the tractors battery, positive ground, having decided themselves that somebody put the battery in backwards they turned it around, [now negative ground] besides the charging system not working, which I don't know if it was working before or not, the tractor shut down after awhile, and would not start, I found that while I had 6v to the coil, and 6v to the dist. nothing was coming out the top of the coil and going into the distributor, the coil also looks very old, possibly the original one , I got a new coil today now what I cant find on here is if there is 6v going into the coil and the coil is good it will have stepped up voltage out the top right? it doesn't get that voltage elsewhere the coil steps the voltage up and sends it to the center of the distributor cap right? yesterday I didn't have any, also would the reverse polarity have fried the condenser or would that mater? like to get this going tonight I really don't have time this weekend to work on this tractor and they need it going

should have stated that nothing was coming out the top of the coil while cranking the engine with the key on

In order to get anything out of the top of the coil, the points in the distributor has to close and then open. clean and set the points to a gap of 0.025 when open.

already did that points are set and have power to them

high voltage only occurs when the points open. most vom are not set to reat that voltage spike.

use a spark tester.. or just look at a plug gap.

6v, 12v, the condensor don't really care. nor the polarity ( no worth worrying about anyway )

You can have power to the points but if they are dirty or corroded all the power in the world will not help. You need to have a spark at the points when they open and close. 2 ways to check them is open them by hand carefully or they will shock you or. Unhook the ignition side of the coil and then with the key on and points closed watch for a spark when you touch and remove that wire from the coil. No spark means points are dirty or corroded. Also when the points are open you should not get spark with that coil wire and if you do then you have a short in the distributor

ericlb.........yer roundcan sparkie coil is a design class called "auto-transformer"...ie...all the turns are connected together. Yer 2-side terminals, one will ALWAYS read battery volts when the ignition switch is turned on. The other side terminal may read battery volts (points open)...or...ZERO volts (points closed). Your center terminal will also read battery volts...except...when the engine is turning over. Remember, 15kv sparkies only happen when the points OPEN. Unlike the weird 4-nipple frontmount, yer 5-nipple sidemount points are gapped 0.025in.

As fer the polarity issue, there are some obscure advantages to positive ground...but...with the improved design of todays sparkies, it is really not an issue. Recommend AutoLite 437's gapped 0.025in.

Iff'n yer lucky, all you need to do is to re-polarize yer genny by "arc-sparkin" the side-by-side ARM & BATT terminals of yer squarecan voltage regulator under yer oil pressure gauge; engine OFF!!! Simple, eh?.......electrical Dell

got her running like a swiss watch, y
all wont believe this, but this time was one I have never seen, apparently recently they paid somebody to do a "tune up" and paid a ridiculous amount for it, the only new parts I could find were points, condenser and a cheap set of champion plugs which I got rid of , but when they replaced the points they didn't pay attention and apparently broke off the little copper tang that takes the power thru the dist housing, goobers "fix" was to make a itty bitty double ended wire,usinf bare terminal ends, shove it down in the distributor, under the plate, the end on the points looked ok, but the other, well, he decided a 1/2 inch square of electrical tape just 1 thickness was enough to insulate that bare terminal end from the housing, ofcourse it worked just long enough to run the tractor a couple hours before it grounded and that was it, that's when the kids spotted the battery 'installed backwards" then the fight was on, I like to never have found that! in fiddling with it all day, all I can say is they now have 1 sweet running N carb fixed, charging system fixed, a "real" tune up replacing everything, some of which looked to be the original parts