most of the modern alternators are internally regulated, that alone cleans up from the stock external regulated setup.
A typical internal alternator has 3 wires;
Power, the big one to charge the battery.
Turn on, connected with the key to "wake up the alternator".
sense wire, reads battery voltage to correct for voltage drop in the wiring.
The quick cheat when doing the alternator upgrade is to splice the sense wire into the power wire. It generally works pretty good, but the voltage does tend to drop a little under heavy load. But it cleans up the wiring to a two wire install.
The one wire makes for an internal turn on wire. When the alternator spins fast enough it makes a little eletricity from permanetly magnatizing the rotor a little bit. This makes enough voltage to wake up the alternator and feed power through 1-wire that is also looped back into the sense wire.
I have one on my boat. I do have issues with charge at idle, I have to blip the throttle a little to wake it up. then keep it at a fast idle to keep charging. drop to a low idle and the alt drops out and needs another blip to wake it up again. I would much prefer an extra wire for a turn on signal, I know it will charge at idle if it would just stay awake. The sense wire I am a little tossed on. While it can better maintain the correct voltage level with it hooked to the battery, by the time the engine has been running enough to charge the battery the amp output will be greatly reduced, so will the voltage drop. and if the sense wire gets a bad connection it will read low voltage and drive the alternator to a higher power level with increased voltage to try and bring the sense wire up to prescribed levels. A looped sense wire back to the charge wire will be the easiest way to cripple the alternator into not overcharging. I prefer a little undercharge to overcharge.
The stock wiring can just handle the stock 60 amp alternator. Any more and you need a direct feed to the battery and forget about using the stock amp meter.
