Old Chevys will be around forever. The time for a young man to spend having fun with his grandfather is limited. It sounds like an easy choice to me. \:\)

Don't get rid of the Mallory it is something simple. I have an undented side cover you can have when you figure it out. Are you sure you have the right coil and condenser? Does it have 3 or 6 lobes? If it has 6 you can run it on one set of points. Some of them take a condenser for each set of points.

"I wonder if God created man because he was disappointed in the monkey?" Mark Twain