73 johnson ignition

[buckner01]

i recently picked up an old tri hull boat with a 73 johnson 40 hp outboard on it. there was a wire that was shorted and a coil fried on the armature plate. and some wiring that had been "hacked". so i got a new armature plate with all the electronics on it so i can at leas get her fired up. my question is this, if she starts up how would i shut it off aside from pulling fuel from it. it looks like the two wires from the points need to make contact to each other and it should kill the spark. is this accurate?? and if so, then why do i have continuity between the points now (plate isnt installed yet) Am i thinking to much into this? it looks like it would have continuity thru the plate but ive never messed with a "points" style ignition before.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, i really wanna hear this thing run...

[badboybre]

we have racing go carts and what we do to cut them off is put a long wire tie on the sparkplug wire next to the plug and when we want to cut them off we just grab the wire tie and pull it off of the sparkplug. this should help you be able to start it and allow to pull them off to stop the engine. as for the points if they are closed you will have a reading across them. make sure they are open when checking.

[buckner01]

so i got my new (used) armature plate on, it was supposedly on a running engine... i didn't change any parts other than the condenser, because i had them new already, anyway, i have spark again but only on the lower cylinder, cylinder one is dead, no spark.. i done have the armature wires hooked up to anything so there are no safety switches that would be causing the issue. what could cause this problem on here.

[buckner01]

We'll I have fire now just have to get carb rebuilt and some new fuel mad hopefully she will be good.. FYI I had a bad plug wire..