Roy Rogers nailed it. When I pulled the distributor a while back to take it apart to see why the rotor would not snap all the way back from the mechanical advance counter weight spring tension, and put it back in, I did not get it pushed down far enough.
The goofy-style distributor clamp will go where ever it wants on the distributor lower tube. So if you take that off and don't put it back where it belongs, you will engage with a little bit of the oil pump and a little bit of the cam gear.
Add to that, the sloppy nature of the goofy distributor clamp, the works can push itself up and out of engagement with the gear and jump time, leaving you bad.
Today I monkeyed with it until the distributor dropped all of the way down before I tightened the hard-to-get-to machine screw which is what clamps the clamp to the distributor, and now I am back on the road baby!
While I had the old distributor out, I compared the tension of the counter weight spring compared to a new distributor I happened to have on hand and went ahead and put the new distributor in.
The springs in the old distributor where not strong enough to overcome the slight resistance caused by the spring on the ignition points. Now that to me, is weak.
Also, I replaced the hard-to-get-to slot head machine screw with an Allen head screw. Makes life much easier and allows for ease of applying more torque on it to keep it in place.
Thanks for all of the advice, and thanks for playing along.
Carl
