Seems a lot of confusion about how the charging system works.

The ONLY current that goes thru the ammeter (in a stock application) is the current to/from the battery and that is the only load that should be hooked to the ammeter.

ALL OTHER ELECTRICAL LOADS are taken out of the system BEFORE the ammeter.

If you have a 1000a alternator and a 20000W stereo system the ammeter will NEVER see the stereo's draw, if you wire it up properly.

If you wire it up wrong then all bets are off.

The reason the bulkhead fitting smokes first is because the full charging systemm requirements go through it. It is under the dash that all the loads are picked off of that circuit.

If you don't understand how the stock charging system works it's easy to get confused/mistaken about hings and suckered in by slick taking hype off of some website designed to sell you a cure.

All the ammeter needs is clean and tight contacts. I clean up the posts, nuts, put a touch of copper antisieze on there and double nut the connection tight. No problems there anymore. For the bulkhead connection, you can either run a one piece wire thru the hole in the connector (eliminating the male/female terminals in the connector) or a parallel wire through an appropriate opening in the firewall.

The only time an ammeter should ever see the full output of the alternator is if you had a dead short to ground on the battery cable, for example, or you alternator is full fielded, in which case your problem isn't the ammeter.