Might be that the engine was hotwired, or the PO tried to hotwire it and did it wrong.  Might be that the PO replaced fusible links with full gauge wire.  Lots of "might be's".  If you had a coil blow up just by connecting the battery, that's a sign of major wrongness.

Better get a meter and start using it.  You really really don't want to smoke the wiring in the harness.  You can test everything you need to test without connecting most of it.  You don't need a coil yet.  You don't even have enough information to choose a correct one.

Also, Nissan did not use the standard red for positive, black for negative on their battery cables.  Make sure you know which is which.  The colors won't tell you anything.

Good luck.

Just for clarity on the battery wires, the wire connected to the positive post on the battery would terminate at the starter motor.

36 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

Might be that the engine was hotwired, or the PO tried to hotwire it and did it wrong.  Might be that the PO replaced fusible links with full gauge wire.  Lots of "might be's".  If you had a coil blow up just by connecting the battery, that's a sign of major wrongness.

Better get a meter and start using it.  You really really don't want to smoke the wiring in the harness.  You can test everything you need to test without connecting most of it.  You don't need a coil yet.  You don't even have enough information to choose a correct one.

Also, Nissan did not use the standard red for positive, black for negative on their battery cables.  Make sure you know which is which.  The colors won't tell you anything.

Good luck.

So I looked and it doesn’t have a zx distributor. I have a multimeter and I’ll use it. I’ll try and sort out the mess of wiring spaghetti and label everything and then sort out a coil. 

You're in good hands with the technical aspects of this, but I just wanted to pop in and say that I love the pic of the exploded coil.

I mean, I'm not happy that your coil exploded, but you sure weren't exaggerating! That's an exploded coil! 

Not the kind of thing you see everyday! 

1 hour ago, Captain Obvious said:

You're in good hands with the technical aspects of this, but I just wanted to pop in and say that I love the pic of the exploded coil.

I mean, I'm not happy that your coil exploded, but you sure weren't exaggerating! That's an exploded coil! 

Not the kind of thing you see everyday! 

Yea… I laugh about it and a lot of other people have said the same thing. Not exactly sure how it happened but at least I know what’s wrong or at least partly.

Some coils have instructions to mount them straight up, not sideways.  Maybe there's a reason.  It would be interesting to see if there are any ID marks on it.

https://www.cpperformance.com/instructions/120-8202.pdf