[philosofriend]

Take out the spark plugs, put the car in neutral. Have someone turn the engine with a crank, or you can usually turn it by turning the fan blades. Look t the points to see if they are opening and closing. If you put voltmeter across the points it should read zero when the points are closed and five point something with the points open and the ignition on. You said the you got spark when you opened the points by hand but you want to prove that the distributer cam is opening the points and making spark. The spark you are looking for is between a nail put in the wire from the coil to the distributer to any metal on the car.

When you said "there is spark there" did you mean at the points? If so, your condenser is probably bad. Among other things one job of the condenser is to reduce the size of the spark across the points.