as you have said, the dist, and alt. do not matter in seeing weather the lights work or not. those only work AFTER the car is running. its a long shot, but what might be causing these problems is a grounding/wire issue on the ignition switch. just in case. go through and make sure all the wires are good
im having a similar problem, except that my starter motor is not getting any juice through my solonoid (brand new solonoid and wires that go to starter) any ideas would be awsome!!

 

i'm with 67 evil eleanor on this one.
The lightsshould get their ground from frame. And the motor should get the ground from the frame as well.

So hook up the battery to blank piece on frame.
From frame connect to motor, so both is grounded.
There should be cables already for that if yoiu haven't ripped them out.

The distributor and coild have nothing to do with it. They get their juice only with ignition on. The light should always work

When you say: no juice I hope you mean no juice on lights and not "no 12V juice on selonoid anymore".
If that's the case: still juice on selonoid, then go from here:

check with a testlight or voltmeter:
a) do you have 12V on the cable to light. for this hook up one lead of testlight to the cable, the other to the battery
b) do you have ground on the lamp. hook the testlight up so that you have one side of light on battery+ and tyhe other on where the light should get ground from. if i remember right that should be the light frame itself

first place to check is the wiring diagram. you need to make sure if your lightswitch gets + before that can bring it to light.

Let us know how you get on, might check on wiring diagram then


Kalli