Folks,
A couple follow up to John's post above with pictures, as John figured out that the steel cased selonoid had a bad internal wire connecting the power input to small terminal on the remote wire from the push button in the dash t. I can now see in my mind how this works. I have never had one apart but if we would have drawn out the wiring diagram on paper it would have lead us to the same conclusion. Bad internal wiring in the solenoid. John did a nice job cleaning up the bakelite selinoid and it functioned fine to allow the circuit to be completed and the 42 fired right off with the push button in the dash as designed.
These two pictures are the "bad" solenoid in place. All looked fine and the mechanical push button on the bottom work fine. And you could short from the power side to the small terminal and it cranked. That should have been the red flag.
Regards,
Chris