Oil bath air cleaners were used prior to the advent of good quality paper and or cloth filters. They are very efficient, but very messy to service. If you're going original, keep it. If you are (hopefully) doing some Hot Rod mods to the car, I'd eBay the oil bath air cleaner to some collector/restoration dude and put a good K&N breather on it. Speedway motors even sells a very nice adapter to go from the 2 barrell Rochester carb to the standard 5 1/8" air cleaner base.