Tony, Couple of things -- A new switch is not necessarily a good switch. I got one of those replacement switches for my H, and it lasted about a year (probably made in China). It's not unreasonable to suppose it could be dead out of the box. I'd run a battery jumper cable from the batt to the starter, and if that works, test the switch, and the switch to starter cable individually (not clear from your post whether you're running your test light from switch to ground or from starter terminal to ground). Do all these science experiments outside so, as skipper wisely pointed out, you don't invite big explosions with sparks. Anyway, the basic problems are limited to cable, switch, or connection between the two. You could also have an old, dry starter which doesn't like to turn anyway, but cleaning the brushes and lubing the bushings should help that a lot -- but that's secondary, not the main cause of your problem. You say you're running from batt to on/off switch to ballast, to coil, then to ballast before distributor? Sounds like there may be one too many ballast resistors there. If you have the original 6 volt coil, it wants to see no more than ~7 volts coming in. If you get a cheap multimeter, you can measure that voltage level. If it has a 12 volt coil, you don't want any ballast. But all of this is secondary to getting it started. Even without a multimeter, you'll see something wrong from a missmatch if the coil is running very hot, or the points burn out in short order. Or, on the opposite side, if the tractor suddenly stops running because the coil isn't getting enough juice. If you use the search feature on the board here, and enter the terms "schematic" or "diagram" or "BobM", you'll find a link to some schematics that BobM has drawn with some CAD software and offered up to Farmall owners out of sheer goodness of heart, and which are MUCH more "readable" than you'll find in the owners manual or service manual. I think most of his work is for stock H or M setups with pos ground and 6 volts. But in your case, there may be a 12V with alternator setup is probably closer to the truth. After you get the starter turning reliably, and the coil/points happy with the voltage/amperage they're getting; you'll want to get the battery charging to keep things going. The old genner should put out 12 or more volts if it's really happy, but the VR may not cooperate and charge your 12V batt. That's another few paragraphs, so best to take one thing at a time. Post back once you get it started, and if you're not getting it charged for more advice and confusion from everybody here. I think you'll find the guys here are more than willing to help -- and from my experience, that willingness to help is because some of the best times you can enjoy are out in the middle of a big field on an old H (or whatever flavor machine) that you've made purr and run well all by yourself.
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