Below is a video that documents the third start of the engine. It’s pretty brief, but I didn’t want to do much more than idle it at that time.

The main issue with getting the engine to work was that I simply had the distributor wires  in the wrong places .. i was off by 180 degrees.  Once I fixed that, it started immediately!  Frankly, I was surprised when it started.  I only swapped the wiring because I saw someone else on the web with a HEI distributor with the wires opposite of what I had done.  Since I was out of ideas, I figured swapping wouldn’t hurt anything and, VIOLA .. it started instantly!

Once I had it started, I had to go back through and fix some of the mistakes in the wiring I had made, including discovering and fixing a key wire that ran underneath the jeep — that was a pain!

Now, most everything works.  One key issue is that the alternator isn’t working.  But, I think I should have that problem solved by tomorrow.