Sounds like you're off a tooth or 180 degrees.

- Make sure that you are on the compression stroke for #1.

- Turn the engine so that the timing mark on the harmonic balancer is somwhere between 0 and 12 degrees (I prefer 12, but that's another story )

- Put the cap on the dist, and put a small piece of tape on the body of the dist in line with the post that you will wire to the #1 cylinder.

- Take off the cap and drop in the dist and adjust so that the rotor points to the piece of tape.

That will get you in the ballpark.