It was nasty, pulled it apart this morning, gave it a bath. Plan on posting a few photos. Also pertronix stuff, very little price difference between their three versions. Is there any downside as to what I choose? Looking at "igniter III" as it looks to replace the plate.
Electronic Ignition Conversion | PerTronix 71281 Ignitor III Adaptive Dwell Control Multiple Spark with Digital Rev Limiter Ford 8 cyl (pertronixbrands.com)
From my personal experience, do
NOT buy the Ford version of the Ignitor III
UNLESS there has been a major design change. A short back story. In 2012, I had my engine rebuilt. The builder installed an Ignitor III. I could never get the timing to be consistent. The car was put on a dyno and with a digital timing light, the timing could be seen drifting. Later, I had a friend put it on a distributor machine. We could easily see the problem. On the Ford version, with the plates, there is/was a crappy plastic "bushing" that the plates revolve around. This bushing was allowing the plates to not only move laterally, but up and down as well. The meant that the "air gap" that is supposed to be .030", was anywhere between about .010" to .050". After contacting Pertronix with this data, the distributor was returned and they replaced it with a Pertronix Ignitor II and a matching coil (VERY important!!). I'm NOT saying it is a bad unit electronically, but a poor mechanical piece of engineering. Now, to be honest, I have NOT looked at them in the last few years, so hopefully, they have re-engineered the plate bushing to a bearing. If this had a similar bearing as the DuraSpark distributor, it would be a good unit.
MY advice, buy a Pertronix Ignitor II along with the matching coil.
EDIT: Why not look at buying a DuraSpark. They can be bought set up and curved to your engine specs, but I forget the name, maybe Performance Distributors. Be aware of Chinese knock offs.