OK- I might pick up that B20e dist on ebay if it stays reasonable.

The deal with the two cylinders not firing is indeed strange as there is decent compression on both and I did a valve adjustment and compression numbers went UP slightly so that variable is eliminated.

I also think that cyls 2 and 4 are not firing consistently but do light off irregularly making the issue more difficult to track down. I do know that pulling the spark plug wire off of 1 or 3 while the engine is running nearly causes it to stall. Doing the same to 2 or 4 has no noticeable effect.

I pulled the dist yesterday and the centrifugal advance is definitely not working and that added to the fact that the crane fireball system that is "installed" has a loose optical trigger wheel and the entire assembly is loose in the distributor makes me very suspicious of the whole ignition system. The entire vehicle seemed to be cobbled together with duct tape and bailing wire (literally) so I'm not surprised to find the ignition system totally hashed. I'm just surprised the dam thing runs at all!