318 issues

messing with this POS again. plug wires are in order. accell pump works. tried messing with the distributer gear. it was parallel to the cam like the book i had said. the rotor was not pointing to the #1 piston or head bolt or wherever i heard it is supposed to be. it was more parallellish to the cam. tried pointing the gear to the #1 head bolt area and it doesent seem to run like that. guess its supposed to be parallel to the cam? also how can i check that the distributer is advancing?