If the capacitor in the alternator is bad it can cause a sensitive digital voltmeter to give widely varying readings. The regulator is either sending full field current through the rotor windings or no current through them. As a result the alternator output is either nothing or maximum voltage. The amount of time the field current is on compared to the time it is off is what determines the average output voltage. The capacitor in the alternator helps to even out the voltage output. Generally the higher the quality of the digital voltmeter the more times per second the voltage is checked and displayed on the screen which results in ever changing numbers. If your meter does not have some capacitance built in when checking voltage the numbers can always be changing. An analog meter simply can not react fast enough to these voltage changes and so the reading is steady. Simply adding a capacitor between the leads of your meter when checking the battery voltage with the alternator charging should make the results readable.
A simple cure for an ammeter that pegs out after converting to an alternator is to run a small wire between the two terminals on the back of the meter. It then becomes a shunted meter and will show amps based on the resistance ratio of the meter and the shunt wire. If you use a wire with the same resistance as the meter the amps shown on the meter will be half of the total amps flowing in the circuit.
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Today's Featured Article - Memories of a Farmall C - by Monty Bradley. When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a farm owned by a Mr. Walters. The crops raised were cotton and soybeans, with about forty head of mixed breed cattle. Mr. Walters owned two tractors then. A Farmall 300 on gasoline and a Farmall C, that had once belonged to his father-in-law, and had been converted from gasoline to LP Gas. Many times, as a small boy, I would cross the fence behind the house my grandparents lived in and walk down the turn row to where granddaddy would be cultivati
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