A Manny run operation being flaky and cheap. What a shocker there.
Have you tested the primary and secondary coil windings ala. resistance testing? The primary winding should read fairly low, between .2ohms to a max of about 5 Ohms. The secondary side should read higher, depending on if it has any resistors in the cap, but usually around 2k ohms with no resistor, and up to another 5-10k on top of that if measured across a resistor.
Eliminating the ignition switch is easy enough to do with a small jumper at the connector to the switch. Basically hard wiring a bypass so that it is in a constant run mode and cannot ground.