So after a little over a year of owning the '70 starting with just a shell and a transmission, the motor turned over and tried to start today. If it weren't for the the distributor being 180 degrees out the motor would have started. I'll fix it on Wednesday when I'm off next week.

EDIT: turns out that the water pump dump is supposed to be on the passenger side and mine isn't so it covers the timing marks on the timing chain cover so I had to find tdc manually, and now she starts. just need to get a fuel line from the pump to the carb.

video of it firing up briefly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRIy3zF2WOs