No joke, but during all this I accidentally shorted my ECU, and I found the spare I couldn't find before today. So after I made my last post (insomniac), I went out & swapped the bad one out. I cranked the car - had the hood open - and watched/ heard/ felt a big explosion. My timing is way off. The backfire bulged both mufflers & actually dropped one off the head pipes! Well, there goes a couple hundred bucks for new high flow AAR-T/A mufflers. I hope that's all it hurt. I'm going to set the timing from scratch again. I never had it dialed in before because of other lingering issues (tach hook up, throttle cable bracket//spring problems and a very leaky power steering pump). But the timing was pretty close... or so I thought. I have parts on the way and the tach & pump issues are fixed.

Hopefully this is just a timing related/ ignition system issue.... Or a bad dream..... Builder is coming over in a few days. I won't crank it again until I have some supervision. I'm learning though, so that is at least good, right?