Thanks to all who responded... Seems I'll just save my pennies and keep the
old ammeter in - at least I'll know when the battery is charged/discharged (as
I don't have an ignition light), and it seems a Voltmeter might not be much
more useful.
JLC in San Diego
Mark wrote:
I have a 70 amp alternator in one of my cars that still has the 30-0-30 amp
gauge and it works fine. The only time you might get in trouble is if you
have a bad battery that won't hold a charge and your alternator is trying to
put out all of it's available current (70A) through a 30 amp meter. 99.9%
of the time I see the amp gauge go to 20 amps after start up and then settle
back down to just a little above 0 in a couple of minutes. Again with the
lights on it will bounce up for a second and then settle back. Rarely would
you ever really need all of the available current from the alternator unless
you are actually using a lot of current like a 1000 watt amp and six driving
lights. Mostly what you want to know is if the charging system is working
and your amp gauge will tell you that. The voltage difference between a
charged battery and a discharged battery is only about 2 volts which is hard
to see on a analog car voltmeter anyway.
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