back firing, no start

[Delorean17@xxxx]

Hello,
My car started to get hard to start about 2 months ago and would take 
more and more time to turn over until it finally wouldnt about 2 days later. 
Since the car sat for so long before I got it I thought there might be 
corrosion in the ignition distributor and other ignition components. I took 
the cap off and there was a little bit of corrosion so I removed dist and had 
it cleaned. I put it back in and had the correct notch(opposite notch at 
7:30 position) on the pully lined up with the "0" notch on the plate, and I 
made sure the rotor was pointed to the #1 cylinder firing position. I put 
in new plugs, rotor,cap and wires as long as I had the intake off.
It will not start now. I just get backfires out of the intake when I 
turn it over. I checked all of the vacuum lines and they are tight. I see 
that the canister in the rear pontoon has the cap missing from the port that 
does not have a hose going to it. is it necessary to have the cap on it? any 
suggestions would be greatly appreciated on what my problem could be
!
Thank You
David
ps.it has great spark and is getting fuel......