Mike,
I really hate to be critical of someones trouble shooting technique, but yours leaves a lot to be desired.
Why arbitrarily spin the distributor around when you can simply check the correct orientation by pulling plug number ONE and turn the crankshaft to TDC on compression stroke? After all, you had to this to
put it back the right way when you found out you probably had it right to begin with.
Question: how did you preset your 10 degrees lead time after re-installing the distributor?
If the engine (quote) "seemed to run (at least it would slightly speed up) if I played with the accel pump squirters to feed fuel into the carb", this would lead one to believe a very lean fuel mixture. Do you run a choke on your carb? Was the engine up to operating temperature before carb adjustments and timing adjustments? Can you rev up the engine? Or does it stall out if you increase the throttle? How about vacuum leaks?
Has this engine ever been run before? Are the valves adjusted correctly? Valve timing too, but that's more than your equipped to deal with right now!!!
From you post, it would appear that your MSD is working. (?
) It would be nice to have a good solid ignition system working on the car before you attempt to fix any fuel mixture problems, or timing issues, etc. If you have a bone stock (simple) ignition system that you swap onto the car, this might help you seperate your problems into smaller individual catagories that you can deal with.
Get your ignition timing set correctly before you get into the carb settings. Then, when you have the car running OK, swap the MSD back in to see if the car still runs OK.
Without being there to observe your problem first hand, it's difficult to make suggestions. I might also add, that if your not experienced or comfortable making these changes/adjustments, then by all means seek help from someone who can observe and take you by the hand to teach you the proper methods to diagnose these type of symptoms. Learning the old way by "trial and error" will get you to the finnish line...... it just takes longer..... and sometimes costs more in the end.
Good luck getting this all sorted out.
- Jim -