Setting distributor rotor, battery hookup

If you saw my other thread, I recently swapped an old Maxima engine into my Z because the original engine had low compression. However, I found a few odd things trying to set timing. First off, the crank pulley has a notch but the crank snout didn't have a lobe so the crank pulley can spin freely. There is a notch in the crank and a notch in the pulley so there's nothing that forces them to line up. The weird thing is the crank and pulley are both the ones that came off the maxima engine. Anyway, with that in mind I'm having trouble timing the distributor rotor, and to make things wore I hooked up the battery backwards the first time (in my defense, I haven't been at a point where I could try to start the car in four years). What should I be checking on to make sure the electrical system is okay? And how the hell am I supposed to set the distributor without the timing marks or looking at the cam gears.