Aww.. darn it....
It has been sitting for some time, just got around to checking the distributor cap last day. And it was as I expected... Something has gone SERIOUSLY wrong there.... The cap was either 90 or 180 degrees of, so no wonder it just backfired op the carb.... after checking some more, it also looked like the distributor arm was misplaced 180 degrees to!
Would have sworn there must have been someone else in the enginebay fidling around...
Unfortunately I got hit with the mother of all rainstorms later, so will try to reassemble it correctly this time
, charge the battery, and see if we can it running again.
I do belive, since it has been running a little poor(too much air) the some of the previous owners may have been trying to adjust the carb to compensate for the leak.