Yes, but...A friend was going to buy one of those and when he figured out the cost of it all he decided to just get one of the clone copies of the GM HEI distributor and modify it as I showed how to do (on this site maybe a year/year and a half ago). Here is a summary of what he told me about that clone distributor: the coil-in-cap looks different from the original, he said that didn't bother him...he wasn't doing it for the appearance value, he said he was certain the new parts and the precision of the new unit helped, he said it started faster, idled better, seemed to get better mileage, ran without missing and he liked the new vacuum advance unit (his on the old distributor was not working well). He also said he liked the new coil and the lack of coil wire. He said he paid less than $60 for one with a black cap on eBay, got free shipping and then paid about $7 for a shaft collar piece. He said it was possibly the best $70 he had ever spent on the engine and it seemed to run better in the winter (he lives where it gets pretty cold). The one I'm using was bought around 1997. I've never had any trouble with it. I have one of Tom Langdon's mini HEI units, however something went wrong with it after using it for roughly a year and I haven't tried to see what the problem is. It does look more like the original. Uses GM parts, but I will tell you finding those that are not made in China, Portugal or Mexico today is not easy. I will encourage anybody considering any of these type conversion schemes to check the play (shaft to body) of your distributor. I've seen several of these that are pretty sloppy by now.
I think he said the Mallory setup was going to cost him over $150 and he still had an old worn distributor and he would still need to find a new vacuum advance.
Jerry and I talked about this around Christmas and recently (above). We've agreed setting up the distributor to run on an electronic scheme could be done in one of about 3 different ways inexpensively and easily. Some would preserve the old look. We just haven't had the time to pour into the project yet.
