Originally posted by Henry Rifle:

No offense intended here, but if you're not sure what it means to have the distributor off by a tooth, you may be in far enough over your head that some posts on a website might not explain it well enough for you. That's not bad on you. It just takes time and experience to do jobs like this.

Lets try going back to the basics.

First, buy a timing light. If you're going to tune a motor yourself, it's a must for the toolbox. Granted, you can time an engine with a vacuum gauge, but you have to buy one of those too. Also, you can tune a car by ear, but that takes experience. Finally, you can tune a car, but you can't Tuna Fish. (Sorry, I just HAD to do that.) Anyhow, here you go. Take this list and follow it step by step.

1. Pull the distributor.
2. Take out the #1 sparkplug.
3. Crank the engine clockwise with your finger over the sparkplug hole until you feel pressure pushing your finger away.
4. Continue turning the motor until the timing mark on the balancer aligns with the pointer. The motor is now at #1 TDC.
5. Put the distributor back in the motor without the cap. Make sure that the vacuum advance canister port is pointing to about 7 o'clock as you look down on the top of distributor from the front of the engine.
6. Check where the rotor is pointing, and put a little piece of tape or a magic marker stripe on the distributor housing.
7. Put the cap on the distributor.
8. The terminal directly above the mark will be number one.
9. Wire the cap 18436572 clockwise from that point.
10. Start the engine. If it doesn't want to start or kicks back, try slightly moving the distributor clockwise or counterclockwise.
11. Once you get it running, set the timing at about 10 BTDC.

If you don't understand this process, or it still won't run, get a buddy who is familiar with timing. Once you get the hang of it, it isn't hard.