Members Opinions and Comments on Today's Electronic Voltage Regulators

It seems the field current is too high for the regulators.
If you can get a manfacturer to give you a spec on the current their regulator can tolerate, post it up.

The alternator's field current draw is pretty straight forward measurement, and many alternator's have that info available. Factory info is in the FSM.

Now as far as the ammeter readings go. If I read correctly its acting as if there is no wire around.
With the wire around, the ammeter should show discharge when running the car off of the battery. Same as no wire around.
But when the alternator is working, the ammeter should not show charge. At least that's what others have reported, and that makes sense. The shortest path, with least resistance, from the alternator to the battery should be the wire from the alt stud to the battery positive.

Regardless, wire around or not, recharge the battery if its real low from a charger.