Well it's all back together now. The only thing I'm not totally sure about is the distributor installation. I believe I have got it right though. this is how I installed it.

1) Brang the motor up on the compression stroke
2) turned the oil pump gear in line towards the #5 cylinder
3) Aligned the balancer mark to 8 degrees BTDC
4) dropped in the ditributor all the way down w/ rotor pointing directly towards #1 cylinder and vac advance at 45 degree angle.
5) Routed plug wires 18436572 on dist. cap

This is exactly what I did last time and it didn't fire until AFTER the huge backfire.