I think you are correct about people not understanding the system and how it works.Points worked reliably for a very long time.
Just makes me realise how much I need to start seriously looking for a lathe.I can do a lot of things on my drill press but it does have its limitations.
Now I need to start searching out a carb from a Massey Ferguson 300 combine.They used a big one barrel sidedraft carb.
Had a slight measuring oversight and my one piece adapter became two.Try again within the next day or two.
back in the parts store years, had a customer(ct swamp yankee) with a ford p/up wanted hei for his truck. he melled a gm hei and ford together. it was over 2 feet long when done. then did his exhaust with cast iron pipe and elbows. back about 10 yrs ago, i was approached by a family from the left coast to see if i was interested in building a twin engine buick str 8 car. (if i was 40, yes!!) one of the engine changes on the 8's was a chevy v8 distributor and water pump were mounted on the front of the engine. real neat. he had done some other stuff to the engines. sucks when time goes by to fast.
Had an OT 1982 Pontiac J2000 years ago that the computer stroked out and made the car run like crap. A new computer was more $$$ than I paid for the whole car, so I took the top half of a SBC distributor and mated it with the bottom half of the J2000 distributor to get mechanical and vacuum advance, and used every other plug wire terminal on the Chevy cap. Got rid of the computer-controlled carburetor while I was at it, and it ran great! As long as the distributor rotates in the right direction, the motor won't care what's firing it or if it's being triggered by points or electronics.
Have seen this done on other distributer-less engines (from the 20's - not new) using the easily available Bosch 009 distributor driven by a belt off either the camshaft or the crank Sent from my moto g(8) using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Somewhere in my junk pile I have a distributor from a 6 cylinder outboard motor that was belt drive.I always thought that would look pretty trick on a car engine.