I can't beleive you just didn't turn the distrbutor back a tad to see if it ran better. Not as accurate as a light, but would have told you right away if it was causing it to run rough. Could always put it back. Just mark origanal position with a sharpy or something.
I also agree that your gauge issue is unrelated to your ignition problem. But might have been caused by your ignition install. You did say you had some wires at the old ballast connection joined together and it was wrong, didn't you? Might have burned some thing in the charging when hooking wires up. Although a current flow issue from a bad charging system might mess with your ignition, I doubt it would bump it up some 30 degrees.