1994 K1500 Silverado 5.7 TBI

Engine cranks, but won't fire.

I'm 69 and this is the first older vehicle I've worked on in many moons so please bear with me as I have forgotten a lot.

I installed new plugs, wires, cap and rotor and the old rotor was stuck. I tried blaster and wiggling then decided to put a 1/4" x 1" flat bar across the flats to pry it off from the bottom. It took a lot of force and finally broke coming off. I've since read where prying it off this way can damage the distributor. Is that true?

I cleaned up the shaft for the rotor, then applied dielectric grease on to it before installing the new rotor. I also put some on each of the cap's interior contacts as well as the brass tip on the rotor. I wouldn't think so, but could any of this grease prevent it from firing?

Second issue is that somewhere along the line the tubing broke from the EGR solenoid to the carb. Could this prevent it from firing?

Would installing an HEI distributor, etc. significantly improve gas mileage?

Thanks