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There is no "on" or "off", the alternator always tries to put out more than battery voltage. The blue wire will always have battery voltage when the key is in the RUN position.
What we refer to as a 12V system is actually a 14V system (I'll probably get some disagreement here) but all of the components in a 12V system are built to handle 14V+.
I'm pretty sure the regulator uses pulse width modulation to work... under your logic, if the alternator ever saw ground it would go to max current to try to get back to 14 volts. If it sees 14 volts it would reduce ampacity. What happens if it sees nothing... I.e. the wire is disconnected?
Mopar alternators with electronic regulators did not employ pulse width modulation. Rather, the battery voltage through the ignition switch was fed to one terminal. The other terminal is connected to the diamond shape pass transistor on the regulator. It operates in linear mode. The output to the field wire can vary from about ten volts down to .7 volts. At .7 volts, the transistor is in full conduction. The .7 of a volt is the result of the junction voltage typical of a silicon transistor and that is as close to zero as it till get and the full battery voltage less distributed wire resistive loss and junction loss will appear across the field and maximum output is achieved.
Pulse width modulation works with square waves and generates massive amounts of electrical noise that would render that era's AM radios pretty unusable. I doubt Chrysler engineers even considered it.
Craig
2014 Ram 1500 Laramie, 73 Cuda
Previous mopars: 62 Valiant, 65 Fury III, 68 Fury III, 72 Satellite, 74 Satellite, 89 Acclaim, 98 Caravan, 2003 Durango
Only previous Non-Mopar: Schwinn Tornado
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