Charlie,
Been awhile since I been around here. Kids doing college , life, work. Etc…
How many miles you drive this thing these days?
You ask 10 people what they’d do, you’ll likely get 17 different replies. Here’s what I would do…
If you drive less than say 5,000 miles a year, one option is a really nice handworked factory points distributor. I mean a good solid healthy one. Good tight bushings, nice non chewed up shaft. Just a good top notch setup.. they’re simple as an anvil, pretty cheap, and they just flat work. Yes you can still get good points and condensers for em, albeit a tad pricey from Napa. Setup for your application it’s about as painless as it’s gonna get for the money.
However, that said, there are a few pitfalls with em. You’ll run about 12,000-15,000 miles before you need to do some maintenance on it…. Unless you mess up and leave the ignition key on in run position with the points closed. That’s not a good deal. Bad mojo. Barring that oops, you may find you just need to redress the contact surfaces and reset the dwell and go awhile longer. Eventually we will need to get a fresh set in there but again, barring anything due to haphazard practices it would be awhile I bet before you needed to.
Obviously the next option would be the above with a cd ignition box piggybacked together with the points distributor. Done this way a set of points likely would outlast those currently reading this thread. This is a good option also.
Next up the list is a full size regular ol conventional HEI. Except these generally don’t fit with more than 1 carb, certain intakes, and/or the need for carb spacers and such. Those are probably out .
Which leaves some type of electronic/magnetic conversions. I won’t let pertronix stuff across my bench these days unless I’m taking it out to go back oem. They’ve changed too much of the ic chip in em from 10 years ago to waste my time on.
So as far as magnetic conversions… to my knowledge there are 3 .
As mentioned Dave Ray does one. It is basically a MSD/Ford magnetic type with the exception of it’s done on an oem housing and utilizes a vac advance.
My boys at Performance Distributors will build you a conversion based on the same setup. MSD magnetic pickup, Ford reluctor and a vac advance. Module mounted on the side of the housing with a wonderfully adequate aircraft aluminum quality heat sink, which I might add makes it about 200X easier to access the module in the event of a replacement compared to Rays deal. His is mounted upside down on the housing and if you have a lot of stuff in the way may require a bit of finagling to access for removal especially if the engine is hot. Keep this in mind.
The DUI setup obviously is matched to your specs as are the rest ,but they quite possibly can get you one out very soon. For your convienience their number is 901-396-5782. Everyone there is extremely nice, so feel free.
I build a couple variations on the factory stuff, both require some machine work on the lathe, both contain 100% factory oem distributor pieces, so if there’s an issue replacement parts are fairly easy to source.
In the last two years this electronic stuff has become somewhat hit or miss in quality. That has me kinda irritated. Bad enough they charge premium prices for this stuff already but the quality seems half what it was even 5 years ago. So factor that in in your decision.
At the end of the day you’ll need something that fits in the space you have and I’ll bet that you’ll find you either end up with a nice fresh points setup or a points/electronic CD hybrid, or simply a full magnetic conversion.
Do t be afraid of the points they got people where they needed to be for close to 85 years before folks knew what electronic ignitions were. Both are good, and both have their own set of problems too.
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