ABout the timing teeth, yes I did drop the pan. Sorry should have elaborated.

I checked and rechecked that the wires were all back in place. I cleaned the terminals on the voltage thingy, the name escapes me right now, kind of early. You know the red and black wire to the black thing mounted to front of manifold. Ugh, can't believe I can't think of the name. Anyhow, I've put a timing light on all the wires while cranking to make sure they were all firing, didn't do the spark plug trick though. The timing mark on this engine has never really lined up perfectly, but pretty close, a friend of mine suggested that maybe I had a spun, umm....sheez, my mind is gone. Spun balancer? I looked it over when I replaced the chain and didn't notice anything wrong, but I put on the extra one at the time just to be sure, neither looked bad. I've tried moving the Dist a tooth this way or that way, tried going 180 out, um what else? Made sure that the rotor was at the #1 position while at top dead center, etc etc etc. I haven't messed with the points yet since I don't really know what the gap is supposed to be and I messed with it forever back when it was running. I looked all through my manual and found no mention of what the gap was supposed to be, it just said to gap it. lots of help!

As far as the PVC, I have the original valve covers, no PVC. The venting system seems a little complicated for this old of a car, but everything is back where it was when I dissassembled it. Theres a real nice diagram in the manual of where everything is supposed to be. At one point during all of this the car would start up but would only stay running if she was running balls to the wall, hence my thought that it was a vacuum leak. I assumed that I screwed up a seal on the manifold and took it all off again. Replace the manifold to head gasket and reused the front and rear rubber seasl put it back together, went through the timing thing all over again, and now she won't start at all. I got frustrated with her last year and just put her away for the winter. I'll try some of the tricks you guys suggested and see what happens.

You don't think I should change to electronic ignition though? I thought that would eliminate that part of the problem. I actually build jet engines for a living and I like to go through my troubleshooting tree, and whenever I can eliminate a problem in my troubleshooting, I try to do that. Thanks for the info, and if anyone has anything else, please don't hesitate, I'll try anything at this point. thanks!