Ugh. Sometimes my lack of knowledge in the nitty-gritty of auto mechanics causes me a lot of frustration.

It took me FOREVER to finally get the electronic distributor working in the 510. I'm not 100% to blame, though -- the DQ magazine article that explains how to install the distributor says that the pos/neg wires are opposite of how they happen to work on my car. I'm not sure if the article is incorrect, or if I've got my car wired backwards... but in any event, I got that sorted out.

For about half an hour, I kept trying to troubleshoot a lack of spark, and after toying with it, I finally noticed that the ignition switch was turned off. It turns out that I can hotwire my starter even if the ignition switch is off, which is just fine for cranking the engine, but not exactly useful for trying to get a spark. Finally got that figured out.

Also, looking into a spark plug hole for top-dead-center to figure out where to place spark plug wire #1 on the distributor cap isn't terribly useful unless you can determine that you're at top-dead-center on the compression stroke. I had that backwards for quite a while before I figured that out.

Ugh. But now I got that work, and I can get the car fired up pretty easily. Now it's time to finish up the exhaust, so I can start up the car without deafening my neighbors.