Originally Posted by Barry_R (Post 1423549)

I have wrestled with a few of these installations as well. A friend who is pretty darn good with electrical and electronic stuff (has hands on some projects in orbit...) says that the FAST guys always blame the ground no matter what's wrong. It's their favorite "whipping boy" and probably often accurate given the installations they see in the garage builder & street market.

As an old street racer and sales guy with a car habit I do not have the true knowledge to diagnose these things - I just repeat what I am told, and keep trying stuff until it works - or breaks. Take my comments as such.

I suspect that some of the aftermarket sales volumes on these kits are as low - or lower than the prototype volumes on an OE project. Means that there are limited development opportunities or resources, and consumer products are fairly immature from an OE perspective. Every customer gets to be a development engineer.

My buddy demands that I install a couple of those big "firecracker" capacitors in line with the power supply. He also concurs with the idea of keeping all the sensor side leads isolated from any high voltage stuff, and wants the ignition box wires completely isolated from the EFI system wires. Almost seems like the two companies never speak with each other (with Holley acquiring MSD those two may have an eventual advantage). I really dislike the wiring terminals and attachment to the box - seems like some sort of mounted pigtail and strain relief to a robust connector would be more effective in a race car oriented product.

And when nothing seems to work you send back the box and they send you another one that fixes the problem. You never learn what that fix entailed, nor whether your wiring was "cause or effect" but you do learn that the mysterious problem really existed in the box and not in your installation.