I have news. That is not the problem. How I know? Your comment about touching the ECU box to ground and getting a spark. Either that or you had TWO problems.
Dangit Del, I was going to let that go since it runs now but NOOOO. :D
It could have been a bad reluctor, or out of adjustment and solved the problem with another distributor.
Or a bad connection at the pigtail I told him to verify that made connection when he swapped them.
