It now starts. It's searching for idle, like a bad egr, or vacuum leak. I didn't have time to drive it. I'm still not fully convinced I swapped a good MAF sensor on either yet. But I won't know for sure until I take it out tomorrow.

Will drive it with the fuel pressure test gauge taped to the bottom of the window so I can see it while I drive.

Starter connection is still loose (but with it running now at least I can actually you know... get it up the ramps).

Also going to have to modify my optima battery abit I think to get the gill cover back on, where it was before.

I did notice on my inspection of the engine, that I have a leak (or seems to be) coming from the #7 cylinder now on the head gasket, but there was alot... and I do mean ALOT of water under the hood from all the rains we've been having in western NC. (all of our dams up here are pretty much open wide, or over the fill capacity and overflowing.) We've had some serious flooding in my area the last few days. We had 4 inches of water running through the side of my carport, but I got off easy compared to some of my fellow county residents.

Even with my hood mostly closed, I still had a fair amount of standing water under it, even ontop of the TPI plenum. Needless to say I'm feeling all kinds of paranoid about all the water that's gotten in and around the car. The whole engine bay was damp.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the help so far. I think we're closing in on it. Or at least fixing alot of stuff along the way that needed to be done. I should take pics of some of the crap I've pulled off the car. It's mildly horrifying really how bad of shape some of it was in.

 

She's definitely down on power, and has a miss going.
Just to be thorough, I'm going to order a set of wires for it. Short of going into the timing chain or out right replacing the distributor I've done everything else in the ignition system.

Lots of steam comin off the engine from all the water that came down. Scared the living daylights out of me. I think it's okay though. I'll know more after I've driven it abit more as to whether that head gasket is okay or not. Almost got stuck in my own driveway getting out onto the road, it's so muddy.