Hey everyone.!

Im struggling with the ongoing saga of my non starting 88 mk4 XR3i mfi cabriolet and have a couple of questions. Having called in a local 'mechanic' but im still no nearer a working car so have collared my workmate and been trying to solve it ourselves. Quick bit of history:

Car was running, was just letting it warm up before going for a drive and it just cut out. Since then it has not started and there is no spark at the plugs. Have confirmed that there is fuel getting in. It has had a reconditioned distributor fitted and a replacement coil which i was assured was fine.

Today we have been having an investigation with the help of a multimeter and this is what we have found.

We checked the wires on the plug on the ignition amplifier and got the following results
Black - 12v with ignition on all fine
Brown - Earth and all fine
Green wire has continuity so not broken.
Did find that the mechaninc had taken them all out of the plug(!) so need to confirm the order

Reading from coil
+ve wire to coil reading 12v all ok
-ve wire to coil earth all ok.
but with ignition on the output from the coil was 8v

Ok here are my questions ( and thanks for sticking with me! )
- What should the order be for the wires in the distributor amp plug?
- Is it right that the coil is only putting out 8v?
- Is there a way to test the ignition amplifier?
- Is there anything else im missing?

Thanks for your time