My understanding is that dwell regulates the duty cycle of the coil. Like, it takes some time (rotation angle) to build up voltage, and so much rotation angle to discharge it for igniting the flame-front. If you get that in spec, then you make the most of every spark, in theory. With it off...
I think that carrying a multimeter in the vehicle is more important than carrying jumper cables. It is best to just get a fresh battery because modern vehicles might not handle the spike in voltage when you disconnect, that is why they say run all electrical accessories while you disconnect...
Did you get the dwell back to spec?
And, does having correct dwell reflect a points gap that is more or less withing factory numbers? In other words, can you discern any distributor cam wear?
I installed that distributor about six thousand miles back. It was the earlier one that CityRacer offers.
I wonder how far off you have to be with just setting the points with a feeler to have an impact on dwell? I recall that distributor cam wear has been described as a factor that can help...
I just did a dwell check in the rain, almost snow. It says that my factory points that have never been touched have a dwell angle of 42 degrees. I did the COM lead to battery negative and the red lead to the negative post on the ignition coil. I failed to get a part number for the igniter...
Maybe it is the igniter that is giving you the issue? If you reinstall a capacitor on the distributor, and bypass the igniter, you might have what is needed to check dwell. The Haynes manual describes the hack, which is really odd for a repair manual that includes emissions info.
I'm pretty...
Humm, my HarborFreight CenTech manual also has an induction signal pickup for high tension lead to a spark plug, different paper, same box. The signal pickup is for dwell and rpm...