Did a tune up today on the 79 xj6 and noticed that my Haynes manual had cylinder #1 as closest to the firewall. The car wouldn't start so I looked t the old distributer cap and wires and noticed that it's 1 cylinder is closest to the fan....started right up..on my previous car, #1 was closest to firewall...and the dist cap can only go on one way and corresponded to the haynes manual...what the heck.....

 

Good that you got that one nailed. although I'm surprised that #1 wire was long enough to reach to #6 cylinder.

 

Jaguar always started cylinder numbering from the flywheel end.