Thanks for all your help. I had the coil and condenser off at my last post. i had checked the vacuum by installing a rubber tube into the diaphragm on the distributor. when i sucked on the tube the whole distributor turned. I was only expecting the internal plate to turn. when i looked at the shop manual the figure that shows the distributor does not show the vacuum advance diaphragm. I've included a photo of the distributor. this is the dist. that was on the truck when i got it. In messing around with the distributor i found it would move beyond the vacuum advance. Checked the timing and it was off. retimed and it runs fine but cannot figure out how to tighten the timing down. There is a clamp on the back of the distributor, but it is tight. Not sure how to attach a picture. will look into that and put it in another post.
i checked the resistor and got 9.6 volts at the coil.
thanks again for your help.
