Great ideas from so many! Thank you.
Not sure if I've gotten past this issue, but taking Mike Peters' comment, I stared at the Les Andrews book. Low and behold, the coil wires did seem to be reversed. I was nervous about stirring up something with a switch of pos and neg, but I did so.
I've road tested it and the subsequent start-up was great. It fired and caught quickly. I let it cool down and repeated the test with the car parked and again, all seemed fine.
Weather permitting, I'll road test it again tomorrow.
I am guardedly optimistic!