Joe -
Much of this is eye of the beholder rather a performance issue.
The flapper in the air intake is inoperative (and open) on mine so I do not think the air handler over the engine has any effect on performance. I do prefer a stock or original look so I plan to leave it as is.
I will readily concede that triple SUs and the ‘waste-basket’ air cleaner are a more attractive look but that isn’t the look that mine has and I’m okay with that.
I did do the ‘5 minute Strangleberg Fix’ - worth looking into:
I propped the secondaries open in a slightly different fashion but the results are the same.
The tach works fine with my Pertronix distributor - but then the car came to me that way so perhaps something was done to address any problem (but I doubt it). If it had come with points I would have left it like that but since the whole distributor was replaced with a Pertronix product (and the original lost or tossed) I don’t know that it would be easy to revert to points now.
Bottom line (oft repeated here): It’s your car - make it the way you like.