Major problem.

[RiseAgainst]

i just did a tune up tomy 1980 malibu, oil, spark plugs, and wires, and i followed the location of dist.cap to plug in the haynes manual for my engine, and now it wont start,well, itll crank, but sounds like crap for about a second then turns off. and the third time i tried to crank it,ihad the gas pedal down and it ran for about 30 seconds, very crappily, and after taking the air cleaner housing off again, there was smoke coming from the carb. im completely lost on what to do and i have duty section muster in the morning. i still have the hood up and oil on my hands so im ready to try whatever.

[MagicRat]

Check the plug routing and firing order. You may have mixed-up 2 or 3 wires, or some of the plug boots and/or distributor cap are not secured properly.

It's easy to do by accident.

Finally, did you drop any plugs when you were installing them? Sometimes a plug that is dropped needs to be re-gapped or replaced, because it broke inside.