Mike P, What a nice clear round up!

birchymm: Couple of things...

1) I still think chickening out and replacing the ignition while halfway across the river is BAD policy.

2) Never, EVER, wire brush spark plugs. The porcelan part will become conductive and crap gets blown up inside next to the towers. Those plugs are toast.

3) If the points are wide open at top dead center, things are badly screwed up!!! This is the primary reason your engine is not running.

4) Denny's point about compression is a good one. An old engine that is suffering from low compression can drop to just about NO compression after sitting for a few days because the oil the old engine is relying on for ring sealing runs off. Then the whole problem is increased as the unwary pumps the throttle which washes all remaining traces of oil off.

U need to pull at least one wire off a plug and hook it to a plug laying on the manifold and check for a proper spark.



If you want that engine to run follow these instructions:

A) Put the engine at EXACTLY top dead center of number one cylinder. Not "about" top dead center. Not within a centimeter.
But EXACTLY top dead center. Then mark the damper correctly.

B) Next pull that number one wire stick a plug in it like I keep saying.

C) Loosen the distributor so u can turn it with just a little resistance.

D) Turn the ignition on.

E) Slowly rotate the distributor back and forth, (if you have the distributor in the hole correctly and the wires on the cap correctly), every time the points open, you will get a spark on that #1 plug. You want to stop turning the distributor the INSTANT the spark occurs. This means you spark will occur when the engine is running at exactly top dead center.

F) Lock down the distributor.

If you cannot get the above working you have an engine disabling ignition set up problem you must locate and repair.
This problem would probably stop a new, expensive, ignition system from doing one bit better.