wow, LOTS of misinformation floating around.
12SI IS the alternator to use, that is why the aftermarket people chose the 94 ampere Chevy Citation ones to pattern their stand alone models. Simple, and easy to just install the farm and implelent regulator inside them, makes them a single wire. What did everyone think, these after market companies figured it out, not a chance, GM did when they first designed the 12SI, one had 3 wires and outside connect for road vehicles, the farm and industrial implement one had everything connected inside it already.
Now, for the earlier remote regulator alternators, there is an after market electronic regulator that makes the earlier remote regulator alternators function EXACTLY like the 12SI internally regulated regulators, and still mounts in the stock remote location. Wells VR715, good change over if you don't want to go with a complete 12SI setup, or one of its clones.
HEI has never had adverse issues with any earlier GM alternator system, unless the alternator/regulator is defective.
An HEI, even one with dead stock parts far exceeds any after market "drop-in" ignition conversion system, bar none. YES, the HEI has inherent problems such as an absolutely substandard coil, and none of the after market coils are any better, and, hard to curve mechanical advances. But HEI's are far better than other systems that do not like to be run on full voltages, nor are anything more than a simple set of electronic points that have been over volt'd by some supposed engineer that insists that system is some sort of performance system when run on full battery volts, then fails repeatedly. Drop-in point replacement systems ARE NOT A PERFORMANCE SYSTEM, they are an electronic set of POINTS, nothing more.
Another total falsehood, "Those HEI modules, none of them are reliable, they fail for NO APPARENT REASON". Simply not true. The run of the mill HEI module will spin well past 7K RPM's, and have NO problems when a good coil is used with them. Only problem is, NONE of the coil in cap coils are worth a diddly darned. Those coils run too hot, have insulation issues, layer short, change resistance as those coil primary windings touch together, overwork the modules to failure, and do not get replaced until the very last, because others insist it isn't the coil, when it clearly is causing the module failures.
Something that also helps kill coils, is the utter myth that spark plug gaps are "OK" when set past .045 MAXIMUM spark plug gap. NOT EVEN CLOSE. GM had to warrantee replace both coils and modules on brand new vehicles when they changed the spark plug gaps higher than .o45, and the cars would stop dead in their tracks soon after being sold. Gaps for some Olds, Buick, Pontiac were "enhanced" into first, .060, then, .080, both to total failure of both coil and module, and, those failures stopped cold when the spark plug gaps were closed back down to .045. This is in a FDM (Factory Directed Modification bulletin) to all he branches, that fixed the failures.
NOTHING fails "for no apparent reason", NOTHING. Now, if you have a large HEI, and want to fix the coil potential issues, MSD has a coil adapter, and have had for about 30 years, to move the coil OUT OF THE CAP, use an oil filled round coil, that fixes the coil, and 99-1/2 of the module failure issues, including MSD box failures when those parts are used with a large HEI.
Why does the large HEI have a coil that is problem prone? Well, if the coil were oil filled, and mounted to the cap, and the coil developed a leak of the flammable oil inside it, the oil would leak out of the connector terminal on the bottom of the coil, down the carbon button, onto the rotor, where centrifugal force of the spinning rotor would position the flammable oil at the spark gap between the end of the rotor and the wire terminal inside the cap. figure the rest out for your self. end of it would be something like ....BOOOOMMMMMM!.
YES, I get really testy when I hear all this other insanity about these large HEI distributors, because I was on the team at GM that developed and designed them in the first place. Since then, a bunch of us that did that stuff have heard every moronic answer for the questions asked about them, most all of those answers way off the truth. It has been real past old, for decades.
I was also involved with Team Kawasaki Road Racing motorcycles. In the winter of 1972, I drilled the first motorcycle disk brake rotors on my own personal H2R factory road racer motorcycle, with 72 quantity, 1/2 inch holes. Since then, I have heard every reason for drilling holes in motorcycle, and car brake disks, from everybody that claimed they did it first, in like, 1980 or so. NOBODY came up with the real reason, making he brakes work better by reducing the unsprung, and rotating inertial weight of the disks, two of them on the front of my bike. Stock disk, 7.50 lbs, drilled disk, reduced single disk weight to 3.70 lbs, EACH. It is much easier to stop a 3.70 pound weight, than a 7.50 pound one. Was it MY idea? Well, frankly, NO, it came from my seeing pictures of a 1965 Can-Am racer Porsche with factory drilled disks. I just did it first on motorcycle disks.
So, lets stop all the misleading info and speculation, shall we.
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