Thanks Dan. I have a brass feeler gauge just for that purpose.

Good luck... sounds like you got it figured out

Thanks to everyone for the help.

I purchased a new pickup coil assembly through Rock Auto, along with a new cap and rotor. I initially installed just the pickup coil in order to confirm it as the culprit and it fired right up but clearly the ignition timing had been changed. I am pretty sure I put the reductor on in a different location. I did not realize that the reductor was not splined until I had it mostly off. I put it back on in what seemed to be a close location, actually there is a groove in the shaft below the shoulder for the reductor so I lined up the roll pin groove in the reductor with the groove in the shaft.

I then installed the new cap and rotor and did a better timing job. I first turned the engine until it was at ~18 BTDC and lined the reductor point up with the pickup. That got it running and then I took it from there with a timing light. It seems to run just fine, maybe a little better due to the new cap and rotor. It took a bit of fiddling to get a reductor gap that worked on all eight points.

I did carefully look at the old pickup coil and finally found the culprit. The pickup coil that was in the distributor is wound with a bunch of tiny copper wire and then that is wrapped with a bit of tape. This leaves those tiny wires exposed to the elements. One of the ends of the wire had broken, it was hard to see. The replacement pickup coil (AC Delco) is fully sealed so hopefully it will last much longer.

Glad to hear you fixed it.

I just read this post today and was going to suggest checking the resistance of the distributor pickup. Typically they fail open circuit (infinite resistance), but a real high value would be bad also. I didn't have the typical resistance handy, but I could have measured one for you for a reference. But you got a new one and it works.

it would be a good idea to check the phasing of your reluctor vs. the rotor now also, since you changed the reluctor too.