Your guages should be on the accessory circut I believe. They will be cut out when cranking. The starter circut will crank the starter regardless of the ign being on. You're not rambling , I think the switch may be bad since you referenced the it heating up. Check it with your test light or preferably digital multi meter and you can work back from there if the switch checks out. You said there was no power at the coil so I'm thinking the problem lies up the line as the feed from the ign switch.

OK, that makes sense. There is good power coming to the switch but the switch itself was very hot after staying in the ON position and might be shorted out internally. If that was the case, is there anywhere else to look after i replace the switch and still have the same problem? Thanks, MIKE.

As far as tracing the problem from the coil back, does the positive off the coil go directly to the ign switch or run though somewhere else first?

Not sure , You can see the wire color on the positive side of the coil so see of it is the same at the engine harness plug , both sides , engine side and harness side. See if it is the same color on the ign switch at the helm.

Well, found the problem, or atleast one. The power wire going to my fuel sending unit was what was shorting out the power to the coil. After removing the wire from the sending unit i had full power to the coil and everything seemed fine at the ignition switch. How can this be? I do not see the correlation between the two. I know shorted wires can do crazy things... I still need to get the fuel gauge working and looks like i need to get a new sending unit because it looks like the top of the sending unit got hot and might have fried. Thanks for the advice guys, really appreciate it. MIKE

Do you mean power to your electric fuel pump? The wire going to your fuel sending unit is not a 12 volt hot wire, its measures Resistance in ohms.

No, the wire off the sending unit that goes to the gauge. I have no idea why or what the problem was unless there was a shrot somehow in the sending unit itself, if that is possible. I unhooked the red wire from the unit (the cylinder style sending unit that can be calibrated) and everything want back to narmal, good power at ign switch and to coil and i have spark. WTF??

path of least resistance !!!!!

the coil wont do work when it can go straight to ground