I've observed thaafft one of the most accepted, somewhat incognito upgrades, in the Mopar world is the Mopar Performance Electronic Ignition kit. There are some who claim it's not available any more and others who question the items in it, in more recent history. BUT to me, it's the best way to get everything you'll need to do the deal. I'd just replace the supplied Orange Box controller with something more stock-oriented, as the Orange Box needs a higher voltage to work. The battery can be hot enough to spin the motor fast enough to start, but still be about 1 volt too low to fire the plus through that box.
Find an electronic voltage regulator that's a drop-in replacement for your existing regulator, that has electronic guts hidden in the normal looking metal box. As for the ECU, I had an old MSD 5-series plug-in Chrysler box that I used on my '67 Chrysler. I found an electrically hot location behind the lh front headlight fender extension, so I spliced a length of wire to adapt that mounting location. Hid that wire in the existing harness that goes over the lh front wheelhouse. Then hid the additional wire to the distributor in the existing cross-cowl harness, beside an electric choke wire I'd already added to that area.
Stay AWAY from the Mopar Peformance earlier-style voltage regulator. It puts out too much voltage that can help you find any flaky electrical connection in the car, plus cause earlier failures from things like light bulbs, thoughout the car, as stated in the Mopar Performance Race Manual. For a race-only car that is started and run for short periods of time, it's fine, just not for a street car that sees normal use.
As I discovered with my points distributors, point lobe wear can be an issue. Point gap and point dwell readings need to be "in range". With time, wear will round off the sharp edges on the distributor cam lobes, which can mean the point gaps will NOT be the same on all lobes. When using a dial indicator to seek to get the points adjusted better, I soon discovered that few of the lobes measured the same height, which meant the point gap would not be the same for all lobes, as point gap/dwell affects ignition timing on each cylinder. For this issue alone, I had no issues with installing the MP ignition kit. PLUS, it looks stock and appropriate for the car.
Perhaps I was getting a little too intense in desiring a more accurate spark for all cylinders? Perhaps it was the fact that many replacement point sets had ceased putting the little vial of "point grease" for the rubbing block on the points in their kits? Or that some had reported that their points (obviously without the vial of grease and their not knowing it was supposed to be there and what it's function was, resulting in points not lasting past 7000 miles, when they should have a durability of closer to 20K miles?
The observed best reason to keep points in the car is that with a weak battery that will barely crank the motor, as long as the points "spark", then the spark plugs spark and can start the car. Whereas the electronic ignition boxes have a minimum voltage threshold that must be exceeded in order for the plugs to fire.
When all cars had ignition points, we just gapped the points for the particular distributor lobe was handy and then checked the dwell when done. Everybody knew that you needed the vial of point grease and how to use it, too. AND, points were pretty reliable in daily use and would spin to 7000+ rpm. So it all worked plenty good enough, back then. AND they can still work pretty well now, as long as you lube the rubbing block and can get the point gap/dwell readings "in the zone".
Compelling reasons to update and not to update. Just depends upon how the vehicle is being used and how "stock" it might be.
Enjoy!'
CBODY67
