The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Schematics needed

Not sure you understand ammeter wiring or not. This is just my answer to the post.

1. One side of the ammeter gets battery voltage direct from the battery.
2. The other side gets ALL the loads to read. ALL loads includes the alternator, the fuse panel, ignition switch. The ignition turns on some of the fuses. Other fuses
are always hot. Ammeter reads all fused loads.
3. The "Light Switch" you see in the diagram is simply the headlight switch which, as you know, has a gauge light terminal on it for turning on gauge lights/panel lights as one of the functions of the headlight switch. One of those lights is inside the ammeter to illuminate it. They are just showing how to wire the light. They are NOT showing the fuse box attached to the wrong side of the ammeter. The battery is providing power to the starter and chain wired to the ammeter. The battery is also feeding the fuse panel buss bar.
4. The VDO ammeter shunt design does not matter to you. What matters is what the spec of the ammeter says about AMP capacity. Your amps on a 59 truck will not exceed a modern VDO ammeter. If you had a 130 A alternator on a 59 truck with stock accessories, The alternator would never produce 130A because it only produces the necessary demand. (voltage regulator)
5. Be sure your alternator and battery feed wires are big per normal convention. 8ga/10ga
6. That's all there is to this.
7. Very nice rare truck!

Unsolicited advice: You are going WAY overboard. All you need is a voltmeter. An ammeter is NOT necessary. It has multi hot wires on one terminal. All the hot load wires. Your 59 could have had as high as a 50 A generator. The generator may have had a 10%-15% reserve capacity. The original ammeter could read that if necessary.

A voltmeter has one small 12V wire from the ignition switch to one terminal and a ground wire to the other. Simple. All you want to know it is your battery condition/charge rate. A secondary idiot light is a good visual warning indicator. Maybe you have discussed the Ammeter vs Voltmeter. The experts say Voltmeter. GM dropped the ammeter in favor of volt gauges and idiot lights. You are adding gauges like you are monitoring a manned moon shot. It's just a 59 truck. The alternator will last a long time. You will know something is wrong if the idiot light comes on and voltmeter shows discharge at higher than idle. Don't worry so much.

I can't get into the VDO website without saying OK to "cookies" so don't know if the diagrams are legit but they are poorly done, look old fashioned and the nomenclature is very, very unprofessional for an electronics company. I do see that diagram shown on several third party blog sites. I never trust those.