[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by MarkS57

Yup, before I went with the new Ames (M&H I believe) harness, this is what I was going to do. A small box to enclose an automotive quality 40A relay with a terminal strip to connect the original coil lead, tach lead, and the 12 AWG 12V power lead. The relay with cause no noticeable voltage drop across the resistance wire. This way you keep all the original wiring. I decide against this as I've read in other posts that the external regulator of the original alternator can potentially cause HEI failures. Not sure about that but as I needed to increase my alternator current capacity anyway, I went for the engine harness that is configured for HEI & the SI alternator. Its been a great set up.

Now, something else about the HEI, you may find issues with modern radios that have a USB interface for your phone, Ipod etc. I did, it took wiring separate grounds, power leads and a lot of ferrite beads on the USB radio cables to fix the problems.

Interesting on the ferrite beads. I looked them up and they are very short clip on things. Do you have to buy a bunch of them to cover the entire length of your USB cables, or just one clip on ferrite bead does the whole cable???