According to Richard Prince's restoration guide, distributors are painted semi-gloss black, and have a small daub of colored paint just below the cap on the right front.  Coils are gloss black.

I recently read a magazine article about HEI conversions.  They found that a properly maintained points distributor made just as much horsepower as HEI, but that HEI made more cranking volts, and of course didn't need new points.

Larry

All I have seen that were cast iron were natural finished. They DO have a colored paint daub on them...it tells the assy line folks what engine it is calibrated for. The paint mark on my '74 was white, but the body of the dist. housing had no paint anywhere....ever.
Perhaps there are some that did have paint on them(but we're discussing Sharks here), I've never seen one...but I ain't seen them all!

Mine is original and there were some remains of black paint here and there. I did paint it semi gloss and changed the points to a pertronix conversion.

Even the NCRS experts disagree on many points, so it is not surprising that we find different opinions.  I checked with our rebuilder who says they are black.  I have always believed they were black, but that is jut based on my memory.  The later HEI units were certainly all natural finish.

I guess that leaves it for you to do whatever you want.

Larry

[QUOTE=Fairlane514]...Mine is original and there were some remains of black paint here and there....[/QUOTE]

My tag band is still there, but the black is gone, and it is a reddish pink on the back side......

As far as I have been able to determine mine has the original factory distributor, when I took it out to rebuild it had no black on it at all just plain. I cleaned it up and put it back that way.

Ladies&Gentlemen,
      The OEM TACH drive distributors where painted semi Gloss Black paint visible above where the distributor sat onto the intake,had an aluminum numbered band,black cap.I have had many in the past and have rebuilt several to original.Also the only conversion to breaker less system I would recomend, is Ignitor I and lately for performance  I use Ignitor II with the Pertronix  0.6  OHM coil ,which you can get in black or chrome  and all still fits under your chrome shrouds.
    If you have questions about the functionality of the Ignitor II system with .6 Ohm coil ask club member Vetter Bob as he has a '69 Vette thumper with the aforementioned set up I installed in his OEM distributor...Good Luck and keep it between the white lines........
     nosal1

     

[QUOTE=steves74]I see the link is to HEI.
Just curious, is converting from my stock to HEI worth it? [/QUOTE]