Here's one way to check. Jack up the driver side of the car and pull the front wheel off so that you can see the crank, I forgot the size of the bolt on the crank (but whatever size it might be) put the socket on the crank. Pull the spark plug out of Cylinder 1 and place a wire clothing hanger in it so that it's touching the top of the piston, pull your dizzy (distributor) out of the head, open the cover to make sure that it's on 1, by following the plug that you've just pulled out. Now go back to the crank (while keep eye-level on the wire) turn the crank counter-clockwise and watch for the wire to go down and when it comes back up to the point that you know it's about to go down stop, put everything back on.


I know it's pretty long, but hey when you don't have the money at the time and have experience, do what you got to do.