Back in June, I went out early on a Sunday morning to fire up the Challenger to head off to an event,,,,Mopar Alley annual car show.

Got the dreaded click, click telling me that either the starter had failed or more likely a dead battery. Turned on headlites, nothing, nada.

Hooked up battery charger for 1/2 hour,,,tried to start again. Still nothing. Tried to jump from another battery. No go.

Then remembered emergency lithium battery pack in the trunk. Hooked it up, engine fired right off and I was on my way. These things are amazing. Recommended for everyone to carry.

Car battery still almost dead,,,likely from dome light on for a few days,,,tested under 11 volts.

Driving on the way to the event, amp meter is pegged at full charge, now I am worried that I am going to burn up the alternator best case, or worst burn up the car because of excessively long period of alt current passing thru amp gauge.

Nevertheless, important show so we soldiered on. After about 15 miles was relieved to note that pegged amp gauge was slowly returning to normal center, which by the time of reaching event site it had finally done.

This goes along with what others have posted on the behavior of the amp gauge is that possibly a pegged gauge is just illustrating that the alternator is doing its job.

A pegged gauge could possibly be showing a defective battery that is not properly signaling back to the regulator that it has reached full charge,,,all the alternator's current is basically going off into a black hole.

Likely an electronics type engineer can set me straighten this if my theory on this is unreasonable.

Likely easier to just replace a low cost regulator as an initial step as others have suggested, rather than sorting this all out