[njsteve]

As we suspected, the harness in the car had regular copper wire instead of resistor wire for the positive coil lead. As you can see the black wire with the pink stripe is just regular copper wire:



The replacement harness had the correct resistor wire. It was actually labeled as resistor wire like the original one I pulled from my toasted factory harness. You could see it was a heavy silver and not copper wire.



Once I got everything reinstalled and hooked up, I started her up. She actually had the correct voltage, in the correct key positions: 9 volts when running! Finally no more frying electricals. Heck, now maybe my tach will even read the correct rpms. (I can always hope).

I gotta hand it to the guys at American Autowire. I don't know many companies these days, that would honor a warranty issue six years after you buy something. My original receipt was dated November 2004 but they honored the warranty nonetheless, and overnighted the new harness, no charge. Now that's the real test of a company - standing behind their product when something like this happens, regardless of the timespan.