the starter is fine, it cranks good. What I mean by tough to start is, when you crank it, it doesn't just fire up like a daily driver would, it will kind of cough a few times, a couple cylinders might fire a little, but it won't keep up. I have to just keep trying and eventually I'll get a good fire that gets it going permanently. I rotated the distributor a little bit to advance it slightly. I'll have to run it again today, and disturb my neighbors again since it's got open headers still, and see what I can find.

thanks for all the replies, I'll post my results