Re: Question on distributors: Buy, rebuild, upgrad
Hi tdskip,
As the other responses have suggested, this is partly a decision that depends upon which car you're working on.
On the 4-cyl. cars it's a bit more of a straight shot to change out to a more modern dizzy, because the tach drive isn't part of the dizzy housing. With the 6-cyl. cars, you are looking at having to spend additional $$$s converting the tach to electronic, if you choose a modern, replacement dizzy. Whether you want to do that or not is up to you.
I don't know too much about the Pertronix replacement dizzy, so can't really comment.
Pertronix electronic ignition conversions to the older dizzies seem okay in many cases, but also seem to have a high failure rate. I suspect this has a lot to do with what coil is used. I am guessing the trigger units can't handle higher voltages of, say, a "sport" coil. So, with a standard coil this might be a good choice. The old dizzy might still need to be rebushed and recurved, though.
I'd suspect something similar with the reports of problems with Unilites. There are specific Mallory coils that are recommended for use with those, and doing otherwise may cause failures.
Another deciding factor, if you ever plan to use something like a capacitive discharge/multi-spark system (MSD, Mallory, Accel, Crane, Jacobs, etc.) it would make a lot of sense to upgrade to a more modern, electronic dizzy, too. When making this kind of change, personally I prefer to stick with one manufacturer as much as possible. This is because I think it's more likely that they will build compatible parts, while mixing different manufacturers' stuff introduces a lot of variables that could lead to problems.
A capacitive discharge system can be triggered with points, which will last a lot longer thanks to a much lower voltage crossing them. But, an electronic trigger is likely more accurate and might also benefit from not carrying the higher voltage.
If you don't mind replacing and adjusting points and aren't really looking for significant preformance increase or working with some sort of high compression and/or Weber carbed setup that demands changes to the dizzy, the original Lucas might be your best choice.
If that's the route you go, personally I'd opt for rebuilding whenever possible, since it gives you some say in the quality of the parts used. A repro/replacement part might be built who knows where and corners might have been cut that lead to problems eventually.