I see where you said you mounted it to either aluminum of stainless steel but weren't sure exactly what. Aluminum makes a good heat sink but I'm not sure aoubt the properties of stainless.
Stainless steel is a very poor heat conductor. If you put a 1/2" thick piece on a hot range element, you might wait 15 minutes before you feel any heat at the top.
Twisting wires is a very common method of eliminating pickup from magnetic fields (like coils). The little loop in each twist reverses the polarity picked up, so it averages out to zero with many twists. UTP cable (unshielded twisted pair) is commonly used for ethernet.
You don't need to spend $200 on a new billet distributor to get a good ignition. As mentioned, the Chinese distributor w/ built-in HEI module is only $45 for the small block version, search Steve White Performance on ebay. Or you can buy the same part for $70+ from others (Pro-Comp, ...). Several posts on here evaluating it. The only complaints I read were from people who didn't buy one.
