Ol Red, glad you figured out your troubles.
Hot rod, I just found a sneaky ignition issue that has been giving me fits for months that you may be able to stump your class with.
Worn distributor shaft...
To figure out my situation after failing to start week after week, I finally got smart, and made/used a static timing test light after reading this article
http://devestechnet.com/Home/TuneUpGuide. At TDC with the ignition on, it lit up (this is good). I backed the engine up and the timing light didn't turn off (I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to do that), so ijiggled the distributor, and the light went out. Ok... So I slowly rotated the engine to see when the points would open relative to the timing ball on the flywheel, and the light did NOT turn on even when I went well past the timing ball. Jiggled and rotated the distributor and it lit up again. Went to Start it and after messing with the distributor (technical term is jiggled) a few times she fired up.
Looking at the distributor more closely, it could be moved around about a 16th of an inch (maybe less) in any direction. After searching through the stovebolt forum, I found someone else had the same worn out distributor shaft issue. Shop manual calls for a very small runout tolerance. I'm thinking about HEI now....
This site is awesome BTW.
