Which way does rotor turn in the distributor?

Garrett Ellison said
You mentioned condenser lead, I'm guessing it's a points distributor? In an electronic distributor installing the reluctor upside down will cause a no start condition, just want to clarify that's not a potential issue from changing the vacuum advance unit.

Garrett Ellison said
Good eye Mattax, I was looking for that and on the small screen and couldn't spot it. Was the reluctor wheel removed when replacing the vacuum advance? If so, remove it and turn it over and see if it fires.

I did not remove the reluctor wheel, I just pulled it up far enough on the shaft to lift up the part where the vacuum advance pin was installed.

67Dart273 said
Let's start with some basics. Do you have spark, and how exactly did you check for that?
Do you have a timing light and have you tried it "on the starter?"

Are you familiar with adjusting points? Any possibility the points are misajusted, or a mis-positioned wire connection is shorting them at the terminal? Are you sure the condenser is "good?"

Also, on a breaker points engine, you can easily set "static" timing in such a way that the engine should just fire right up, and be close "in time."

Rotate the engine until the rotor is "coming up" to the no1 tower. STOP the engine while watching for the timing marks, with the marks set at either where you want the timing set, or maybe 5 BTDC

Now either put a test lamp on the coil NEG, or use a spark gap tester hooked to the coil secondary wire. With the key "on" and the dist. loose, rotate the dist CW which is RETARD. Slowly rotate the dist CCW from there which is "towards advanced." At some point (carefully, slowly) while moving the dist body, either the test lamp should light, or you should get one single "snap" spark from the secondary test gap.

At that point, install the no1 wire wherever it is that the rotor is pointing, and run the firing order around from there.

I'm going to dig into it tonight after work. I ran the battery down yesterday messing with it, so it's been charging.

Mattax said
In the photo I'm seeing
a magnetic pickup connection,
red painted sprak plug tube engine.

So earlier engine in later car, or early engine and car with later distributor and presumably the ECU wired in.

I think it's a later engine in an earlier car with an ECU. Numbers on engine indicate that it's a 1973 installed in a 1964 Barracuda. I can take a pic of the ECU if there's a need or want.