The parts book calls for a 60 amp square back alternator for on my volare. I happen to have a new 65 amp square back alternator for a mid to late 70`s truck. Will I have any wiring issues if I use the 65 amp?

Probably not, they both should be dual field alternators with two wires that slide,push on, the rear spade terminals and one big feed wire back to the battery through the starter solenoids

I brought it up because I did have a issue a while back with melting the blue wire in my harness on my other car not long after I put on a chrome Tuff stuff alternator. Not sure if that was what caused it to melt or not. I think that was a 75 amp IIRC.

If your charge wire isn’t big enough to handle the amps you can make a shunt to the battery. Will throw off your amp gauge since all power won’t be flowing through it anymore. It would probably come down to if you actually draw the full 65 amps or not.

Yes you can use even a 500 amps alt on your car and will ve even healthier for the charging system. Some adviced mods are on the way just in case. No need to get a wire straight to the batt, that will bypass the amm. Please make a search about bulkhead bypass ( or parallel wiring ). Stock amm can be kept in place. Amm just read what batt sources or get charged, not the full alt ouput. Of course IS INCORRECT source anything from batt because amm will read it as a discharge and will add a load on it which is not needed. With amm on cars, every device on car must be on alt side.

An alt just source what is requested by the system, not its full output capacity. Bigger capacity alts will guarantee a nice output capacity at iddle ( the bigger problem on our charging systems )

I guess to word my question better can a late 70`s vehicle equipped that came from the factory with a 60 amp alternator, will 5 more amps cause wiring issues. If in question, I just won`t use it. I`m not having any charging issues at the time as the old alternator just has a bad bearing and is crappy looking and I thought since I have the 65 amp I was considering using it.

Alternators only put out what the system needs and that is determined by the voltage regulator. If you had a wire melt after an alternator change out the cause was something drawing too much current, like a short. Not because of the alternator.

5 amps, one way or the other, isn't going to be an issue because unless you add more load, or something shorts, the system won't be drawing more power than it did before the swap.

thanks for that.

Pretty sure the Volare already has a shunt style system.

Sorry, didn't read it was a Volare... yes, they are already shunted. No need to worry about that then. The Shunted Charging system began on 70 or 71 for Chryslers, and on 75/76 on the rest of bodies.

in my infinite stupidity, i take the shunt to mean a bypass wire from the alternator output stud to the battery positive post via the starter solenoid hot post, correct ?

A shunt is how an ammeter reads current. In the older cars the shunt was built into the meter itself. Later cars moved the shunt into the engine compartment, negating the need for full charging system current to pass thru the bulkhead connection, twice, and the ammeter in the dash. Essentially, it is a precise value resistor that the current flows thru and the meter part itself is technically a milli-voltmeter that reads the voltage drop across the shunt and presents it's reading as a current value on the meter face. Ohm's law being used.

While the ammeter wiring bypass crutch many use could be considered a shunt, insomuch as it shunts the flow of current into a different path, it is typically not what is meant when properly referring to a shunt in the charging system.

thank you sir !
now if i can just convince the spiders in my noggin to not cover this info with cobwebs........

......THE short answer is no it will not ......

depending on what year vehicle your installing that late 70s alternator on, Chrysler changed the way the field wiring was done somewhere around 1970 with the addition of the electronic voltage regulator. The old field had one power and the other grounded. The late 70s both field wires passed through the electronic voltage regulator. If the two fields match on both alternators, you won't have a problem, if they don't match, don't do it.

As NachoRT74 said an alternator's max amps is not a problem UNLESS it is less than the total draw of every power consumer on at the same time. Example when you order a towing package for your vehicle the more amperage alternator is for the lights and electric brakes on the trailer. The engineers calculate down to the single amp draw for the total power consumers on the production vehicle. Another example, for me at least, was something that baffled me when I got my '68 Road Runner and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong with the front, in the bumper parking/running, (turn signal) lights and why they didn't work or stay on like I remember my '69 Road Runner's parking lights did when I turned on the headlights. I don't know how much time I spent trying to figure out why they didn't stay on, on the '68 RR?? Then I realized that the '68 had four side marker lights and not reflectors like my original '69 RR and realized the engineers had to sacrifice the front running/parking lights when more amperage consumption happened when the headlights were on and even more consumption when all four were on with the high beams. They had it down to the single amp for the size of the alternator to avoid going to anything larger or with more amps that is. Is the '70 383 Road Runner standard alternator larger in amperage output than the '69 as in '70 they went back to side marker lights and reflectors and did the front running lights stay on with the headlights on? All of that for just four side marker lights but as in Apollo 13 it was down to only what is needed.

Probably more do do with the front HL/Marker wiring feed size, then with the Entire electrical system.
I doubt they had Alt. sized within 1 amp of full system load.
Back then there was safety factors introduced, unlike today where simulations try to squeeze every last drop.

60 to 65 is no big deal. They usually upped the wire size when it was a fleet car with an HD alternator.

More of an embellishment on my part but you have to figure with only one to three amperage alternators to chose from for production they had to have some totals for consumption to group certain options into for choosing alternators for vehicles. So many consumers with all of the possible options like an A01 light package, cruise control, 3-speed wipers, three different radio options and 8-track, console lights, power windows, A/C, dual horns, power seats, rear defogger, clock, etc., lots of consumers and then have a cold, rainy, dark, high humidity night in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic and that's what an engineer has to design the system for. If they can use an alternator that saves them a buck or two for production and you times that for the 84,000 plus '69 Road Runners for instance I'll take that back in the day savings X $2.00 or $3.00 to the bank any day. Yes I embellished a little or a lot but I'm sure the potential total possible power consumption has some bearing on which alternator is spec'd per vehicle and maybe it ends up being pretty close to max amperage versus consumers in the system? Too much is not a problem too little is.