Alright, so the other night I was driving on the highway and suddenly it backfired and it lost all power. Still had lights and all though. Coasted to the side of the road and checked what I could. Friend came with a trailer to get me and brought it to his place where we've been working on it some the past few days.

So we've followed it all down to the ignition system. Tested the coil and wasn't getting anything from it so went ahead and replaced it, but still the same result. So pulled off the cap and rotor button and cleaned up them. They're not in perfect shape and I'm going to replace them, but I don't believe that it's the problem because the coil isn't even getting signal to fire.

Now, I've never messed with anything this old, but behind the rotor button there's what looks to be an early style ignition control module that's kind of like a small coil that goes around the shaft of the distributor and screws in at two points and has two wires that come off of it going back to the coil which I assume is for the signal to fire? Is there a way to test this? It kind of looks like a points eliminator?

Thanks in advance and excuse my lack of knowledge on the older stuff lol.