Hei conversion troubleshooting

So i put the points back on. No ballast resistor anymore. So full voltage to coil. Car ran fine. Problem gone. I didn't even bother to gap the plugs back down, they are at 0.045" and I went ripping around the neighborhood like normal.

So here's the facts.
HEI was getting full voltage to the coil and module via a relay. Confirmed this during the bad running conditions that it showed full 14v at both places.
Tested the Ignition module this morning, 4x and passed all.

Tested another coil a couple days ago, but that was with the old distributor. Car ran badly with new coil. So it is possible that the coil is bad, and the jacked up phasing on the old distributor hid whatever improvement hanging a new coil made.

Electronic Distributor is a rebuild HalifaxHops unit with a custom curve. I experimented with different reluctor gaps, tried 0.005" to 0.012", no difference. I switched orange and black wires on the module, drastic difference the car would only run one way. So its not that.

Grounds are also something I have wondered about. My last setup was a huge ground wire from alternator to VR ground to ignition module. So they should have all been on the same ground plane. All sharing a stud on the intake manifold.

All told I'm about $400 in and still running the points. What now.