Firstfives.org

I've tried the magnetic pickup conversion kits from Hot Spark, and Pertronix, and they seem to be viable options.

However, I recently picked up an M30 electronic distributor from a Shark, which has the electronic trigger built in. I was concerned because the sixer it came off of had a mess of crap mounted to the inner fender well which I didn't get, but was worried I would need.

I picked up a Procompelectronics.com 6AL (MSD 6AL Knock-off).

Yes, I have four of these 530i monsters with points distributors, and I've never been good at setting points.

I dropped in the new distributor, wired in the 6AL, and it fired on the first crank... BUT

This distributor has two vacuum ports on it. Naturally I reset the timing according to the manual, full temp, 2200rpm yadda yadda.

But attaching the vacuum hose to the "obvious" port created an issue.

So, I've monkeyed around with things, and I think the biggest problem is that the canister doesn't have enough spring force (even when the vacuum hose is disconnected) to affect the advance/retard.

My end solution was to connect the manifold vacuum hose to port pointing at the distributor, and the port pointing away from the distributor got a new vacuum hose to a port that only sees vacuum when on the throttle.

To me this was counter intuitive, but in the end it seems to cure the problem.

It sounds like you might be close. Stock, 530's as you probably know, had vacuum retard only. Ported vacuum retard from the throttle body. The distributor you got has vacuum retard and advance. Now I can't remember if 530's had one or two ports on the throttle body as the distributor you got is designed for, but the one that points towards the dist body is the vacuum retard. It should go to the throttle body and be just inside the butterfly with the throttle fully closed. The advance one points away from the dist body, and goes to the throttle body port that is visible with the throttle closed, and concealed when the throttle opens. If you have tight visual smog to pass, such as here in California, you might be able to get away with a retard only setup, but you might need to put the vacuum box from the old points distributor on it too, hard to tell.