alt upgrade

Yes, amps are just as important as volts, but when your volts start to go down, it's a pretty good indicator that your not producing enough amps to maintain the voltage level. (too much current draw for the available output, hence you get a "brown-out") At full voltage lights burn brighter, ign. works better,all power accessories work more effeientlty , my cd player actually shuts off if the voltage falls below 12. I will probably never use the full 86 amp output, but alternators that have high out-put at the rated rpm, probably also have higher out-put at idle to low rpm as well.(at least the one I chose seems to have) It's clear to me that the original 1967 single field alternator (which probably had a max output of 35 to 40 amps) just was not able to fully power all the stuff on this big car, and to be fair, in 1967 that was probably as good as it got. I use these cars as daily drivers and expect them to perform as well as they can. As far as the ampmeter goes, on these older mopars I recommend to bypass it irregardless of how many amps their system can produce, here is the reason, the way Chrysler designed these systems, the full output of the charging system is sent from the alternator thru the firewall, up under the dash to the ampmeter and then back thru the firewall to the battery, all with no short-circuit protection(fuse). I have a 77 dodge truck in which the ampmeter melted-down and caught fire while I was driving down the road ! , in doing the repair to it, I studied the wiring diagram and saw how dangerous a design it was, our imps aren't much different.I have heard of other old mopars burning up due to the same design flaw. In fact if you look at the ampmeter in my 67 lebaron, you will notice that it sits slightly crooked in the panel, (just like my dodge truck did) because the heat over time is deforming it. I am not going to wait for it to do what my truck did. Sorry to be so wordy, Just trying to fully explain and maybe save some old mopars. Best regards, Mike Becker