WD starter question

Did you have the charger setting on 12v or 6v ??  The starter was probably a 6v and you might have cooked it.

You had a charger on the battery, had the CHARGER set to START mode (meaning, not limiting charge current to 2,5, 10, or 20A)... but the IGNITION COIL was dripping oil?

In order for the coil to be leaking, it either had some sort of physical wound, or it was energized and very hot.

For the latter to be the case, the ignition switch would have to have been ON... in which case, the charger being in START mode means that it'd still charge the battery while the ignition coil was melting down...

I'm thinking that the loud screech, was the starter engaging momentarily, then either breaking the bendix somehow... or seizing a bearing.  Having a well-charged 12v battery hitting that starter hard under the right circumstances might cause bendix or bearing failure, but they'd hafta be well-weakened already.

I'm betting that if you left a 12v charger (with so-called 'starting mode') on a 6v battery for any length of time, you'd have no battery, and a really big, yukky mess... not a really-really-well-charged battery... SO...

Pull the starter and tote it into an automotive electrical shop for a checkup... and I'd be surprised if you didn't find a mechanical ailment in there PLUS fried brushes, commutator and/or a burned-out starter switch.

Well, dunno what else to say, Dennis, other'n mebbie the coil that WAS there, was either dying (and you didn't know about it yet), or under a whole lotta stress and fixin' to expire.

The one thing I WOULD be suspicious of... is the spring to the contact points.  If I remember correctly, the orientation scheme of the distributor, is that battery goes to the coil, through coil, to terminal on the distributor... From that terminal, current passes THROUGH the breaker point SPRING... through contacts, to ground.

I have seen on more than one occasion, where a coil failure OR a left-on switch, or pitted contacts, have caused enough heating in the breaker point SPRING (remember, it's spring steel, not copper) to get discolored from heat, and from that point on, the spring looses it's tension.  The spring is a heat-treated element, and in the process of a long-term key-on or short, the spring heats up enough so that it loses it's temper.  The typical symptoms I saw after that, was an engine that would start, but not rev up... and in many cases, would barely stay running at anything above idle... 'cause the points weren't closing firmly enough to make 'good' contact in the duration of closed-pointness... they 'float', and it'll sputter, pop, spit, bang, and generally be an obnoxious multi-cylinder h0le...  most guys head straight for the carb 'cause the points 'seem fine'...  I still got plenty'a hair 'cause I figured that one out a long time ago.

Sounds like yours escaped that bane.  I'm not surprised the switch and wiring got hot.  I'm thinkin' you actually got lucky, and that it would've probably died when you were out doing something ordinary.

My thinking is the battery.  Remeber you boiled the hell out of you battery for an hour.  I think that it has enough residual juice to run a coil and give you decent to good spark, only needs a very few amps at or around 4ish to 6 volts, but to even begin to spin the started you need quite a few amps.  Like Dave said above, the battery is a screwed up mess inside now, with all kinds of crap between the plates making it basically a door stop.  If it were me, I would unhook the coil wire, and put a spare 12v battery in just to check the starter.  My WD45 has been converted to 12 in the distributor/coil only, the starter is still technically a 6volt, and been that way for years, never any problems.