Seems like the possibilities would go like this...

1- breaks in the wire making up the coil would make it go to open-circuit.

2- shorting between adjacent turns in the coil would make resistance go down. Pulling in the AC clutch, this would generate less force than it's supposed to.

With 2 different meters BOTH reading low, maybe that's exactly what happened??

 

Most likley option 2, internal shorts, however resistance readings can be misleading. I agree it would be a bad day to reinstall w/ reduced gap and find the same problem. If the compressor is very difficult to access, I would replace the clutch coil to be on the safe side. However if relatively easy to access, I would try just readjusting the gap.

good luck

 

To close this thread out, I took the car to a trusted mechanic & for 1 1/2 hr labor they adjusted the air gap back into spec & the AC is cooling great again. Thanks for all the assistance here. Hope this thread helps someone else. Kent