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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.

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Simply bypassing the amp meter by moving one wire to the other post is so easy, I can't understand why some people are against it. Costs nothing but a sore back twisting under the dash.

You can go hardcore and bypass the bulkhead, but just doing the above is fairly effective.

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False!

the first point to burn is the bulkhead. Then the ammeter

ammeter comes bad and burn wires JUST if you get loosen the ammeter terminals, but being these propperly tight, the fist spot will be ALLWAYS the bulkhead terminals and BEGINING by the black wire coming from alt.

the other mistake made what begins the burn everywehere INCLUDING AMMETER ( and that will be true on this case ) is making a batt upgrade with a higher reserve unit but still the low amperage alternator, that will take FOREVER to get back charged the batt, making high peaks going to teh system when increasing RPMs... more to read about here:

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,62772.0.html

( one of the links there is the one already exposed )


You can make the conversion to shunt system using lates ammeter internals on your old case and face to make to work EVEN SAFER... is also exposed on one of the links there.

I trust more on an ammeter than on a voltimeter when reading charge status. Amperes is what holds the electrical load, not volts even is true they are certainly somehow and relativelly proportional. Although a voltimeter works too, it can be a cheater. Both together, even better.

once I got 18 volts reading but discharge ( shorted alt ) you would think, ok something is wrong but still being charged... and is false.

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Super false!!

I have done away with the gauge and had no problems running bigger alts on these cars. Add a shunt and you are good. Nothing wrong with doing the extra work on the bulkhead though. Just have not found the need to do this on mine. Plenty of other things to work on.

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just that OF COURSE a higher output capacity will increase the output at iddle by default.

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Really? What is the output of each alternator at the same idle RPM?

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FWIW, here's what came with my 78 amp alternator I got at NAPA to put into my 67 Dart.



Note the output is for ALTERNATOR RPM. I don't remember the ratio, but you divide the crank pulley size by the alt pulley size and there's your multiplier. If it's 2.5 then by 2500 engine RPM, the alternator is over 6000 RPM. Idling at 800 RPM would give an alt speed of 2000, etc.

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The set up even when the car was new was marginal.

The engineer who decided to run all that power through the bulkhead then through an ammeter should have been fired.

Run the charge wire right to the battery.

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Best advice in this thread by a mile.

Yes the ammeter will no longer read anything, BUT the ammeter doesn't tell you much anyway. Even at the best of times, it only tells you if there is out put. A volt meter tells you very clearly whether you have enough output with one simple number.

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Simply bypassing the amp meter by moving one wire to the other post is so easy, I can't understand why some people are against it. Costs nothing but a sore back twisting under the dash.

You can go hardcore and bypass the bulkhead, but just doing the above is fairly effective.

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False!

the first point to burn is the bulkhead. Then the ammeter

ammeter comes bad and burn wires JUST if you get loosen the ammeter terminals, but being these propperly tight, the fist spot will be ALLWAYS the bulkhead terminals and BEGINING by the black wire coming from alt.

the other mistake made what begins the burn everywehere INCLUDING AMMETER ( and that will be true on this case ) is making a batt upgrade with a higher reserve unit but still the low amperage alternator, that will take FOREVER to get back charged the batt, making high peaks going to teh system when increasing RPMs... more to read about here:

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,62772.0.html

( one of the links there is the one already exposed )


You can make the conversion to shunt system using lates ammeter internals on your old case and face to make to work EVEN SAFER... is also exposed on one of the links there.

I trust more on an ammeter than on a voltimeter when reading charge status. Amperes is what holds the electrical load, not volts even is true they are certainly somehow and relativelly proportional. Although a voltimeter works too, it can be a cheater. Both together, even better.

once I got 18 volts reading but discharge ( shorted alt ) you would think, ok something is wrong but still being charged... and is false.

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Super false!!

I have done away with the gauge and had no problems running bigger alts on these cars. Add a shunt and you are good. Nothing wrong with doing the extra work on the bulkhead though. Just have not found the need to do this on mine. Plenty of other things to work on.

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and you are missing the ammeter reading when doing that, no need for miss that reading when doing everything right.

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