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If its sparking at all it should be perfectly fine.

But I can't imagine what else...

Try starting it in diag mode, jump TEN and GND in the DIAG box...

Any sort of alarm/immobilizer?

Plugged cat? Can you hear it moving pulses of air at the tailpipe?

Tried starting in diagnostic mode. No go.
Have already cleared all codes. But I just ran out and did it again. Still no go.
I have a $410+tax disty. ordered. Hope it's here tomorrow, my son has been driving it this year and he's paying the bill. Hate to dump money in not knowing if it's going to do any good. I don't know what else to try.
I'm here by myself rite now so I stuck a tissue in the tail pipe and it blew out when cranking the engine so I don't think the exhaust or cat. is plugged.
I have compression, fuel, spark and timings good. Everythings plugged in. I can't find source for a major vac. leak. The car ran fine before I shut it off. This dosen't make sence!
The only thing I can think of is that the spark is breaking down under compression. But even then you would think it would miss fire, cough, sputter, something?

these engines are hearty, it takes a LOT of stuff out of whack to make them not run... like you've read, vac leaks, jumped TB, blown HG, blown rings... the car will run with all of these problems combined.... just not well. The main problem is NO spark from a dead disty.

Does it smell like combustion at all or just raw gas?

Any ideas before I buy a $400 disty?

Yes...it's your car telling you to go ahead and swap a KL into her...like most women, she likes having big things stuffed into her

Fixed!
This will be my last post on this unless someone has ?s.
I hate electrical stuff and this is why. If you've read the post you'll notice the car had spark. Not great spark but it would jump a small gap to ground. Dosen't sound like a disty issue does it? I didn't think so either, but the fact that these engines have disty. problems was stuck in the back of my head.
So I check everything else I can think of and finally endup buying a dist.
Get it on Thurs., went to put it on Fri. and it came with it's own instructions on checking volt feed from the car. Went over that and everything was good. So before putting it in I decided to test the coil winding as the service manual shows. Now I did this to my old dist. when trying to trouble shoot the prob. and the primary readings were off but the secondary was fine. Now I test the new one. I couldn't get a good reading on the secondary windings. This is a Ohms. resistence reading. It's not rocket science. Well you can imagine the language that was flying. Called the parts store, closed for the holiday, probably best cause I'd of made an a-- of myself! Now I'm really pi**ed, so I decide to put the dist. in anyway just incase I was doing something wrong in the Ohms. tests. Did I mention that I really hate electrical stuff? Guess what? It fired rite up. Runs like a top! So I pull it and put the old one back in, No Go.
Put the new one in, set the timing, runs great.
SO, the dist. can go "just like that", and it can have spark and still not run, and it can drive a fella nuts trying to trouble shoot it.
Any hoo, I hope anyone with a similar prob. finds this thread in the search.
Zoom Zoom!