The order of operations I would take...

1) put in a well charged battery. Either yours or a borrowed one, or a new one. I'm betting that will get the car to start.

If it doesn't, then:

2) Check the points. Nothing fancy, just pull the cap and make sure they open at the right time. Make sure there's minimal or no play in the distributor shaft. After you do that, confirm that you do indeed have spark at the plugs.

3) Now is the time to check the fuel system. Make sure you have fuel... pull float bowl covers as mentioned. Just make sure there is gas in there. if you know what to look for, you can see if there's water in there, but since it ran earlier that day, I doubt that's the problem.

If there's no fuel in the float bowls, dump a little in there. Then replace the covers. Try to start. If it starts, find out why it's not getting fuel. Likely culprits in that case in order of probability, highest first: Fuel filter plugged, fuel pump bad, plugged fuel line. More on that later if necessary.

Lastly though, and perhaps most importantly, is to determine why your battery was dead. Could be it's just a really old, really bad battery. But more likely is that it's not charging. And that your battery finally went flat dead with no incoming charge is the reason the car was running poorly and finally died. Amp lights don't always work properly, or can be dim such that you didn't notice.

The reason it didn't start with the jump could have been a number of things.. less than ideal connection to the jumper cables, fuel fouled plugs, starter drawing so much of the available current through the cables so the plugs weren't getting a hot enough spark...Likely a combination of at least two if these issues.

Clean those battery connections when you put in the new battery... she'll fire right up.

Good luck! Do report back

*edit*.. based on your last post about sputtering exhaust... it could also be your timing gears failed.. probably not, as you'd have heard those. But, while you've got that distributor cap off, have an assistant crank it over while you watch.. make sure the distributor is going around.




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-Matt I ♥ my ♂