sounds like you are doing some logical basic things--good for you----you can turn the dist by hand or a drill to see if it will fire the plugs -----just put the coil wire on a spark plug ling on the engine for a ground--spin the dist with 12 volts going to the coil and points(it is a points dist, right?)should get good spark-------then move on------

And stick around--we need some hot roddin for when this election is over-------