Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think the distro may be 180 off.... backfire thru the exhaust (I think) means it's firing while the exhaust valve is open which if I understand the sequence properly it is firing on the opposite stroke from what it should be... and I did not look at the wires before disconnecting the old stuff, my bad, I just assumed they were in the proper order... I have no idea what was done to make the dual-point distro run on only one set of points... thanks for making me step outside the box and think about it...
Oh, that's an important piece of the puzzle not posted here..... when I got the car it had some kind of dual-point to single-point conversion not. Not a distro swap, the dual was somehow made to run on one set of points. I subsequently installed the Euro-curve true single-point distro from my other car.