i hate my truck(not my chevy)

[arm51]

it seems that every time ive made progress on my ford it just backfires right in my face i finally had it running decent but it was just out of time so i figure no big deal it had a bad vacume but that was because of a previous owner cut the smog off so i removed the smog pump and all that goes with it and that made it alot better but i still couldnt get it timed just right so then i think that the timing chain jumped off so i pull everything out and bought a new chain and to my suprise there was just 2 gears, last week i was on the verge of getting my license back and runnin out of time so i had a buddy who knows alot more than me work on it and now it wont even start and i looked at the distributer and it didnt look so hot so i put a new distributer in new cap new plug wires and it still wont start, yeah i know its kinda a long story so bear with me here. every thing checks out fine the carb is gettin fuel its got a new fuel pump and filter when i try to start it its wantin to turn over but it just won't ive never messed with a distributer until now so i may be doin something wrong but i dont think that i am
it may need a new ignition coil but i dont have any help so i cant tell if its gettin a spark unless theres a way to find that out by myself so if someone has some advice it would greatly help