And yes, I have had several ammeter-design fires that I have had to deal with. Since I usually deal with 60-66 trucks, this is the ones I have dealt with the most. Usually it just melts the wiring harness, nothing else managed to catch fire. I burned my hands pretty good trying to disconnect the underdash wiring harness before it completely self destructed. The plastic melted to my hands, which took a while to heal.
Anyway, I won't hook up ammeters in any of my trucks anymore. I ran the output of the alternator to the battery, then I set up a fused feed wire to the rest of the truck using a fuse from a later 73-87 truck (the one on the firewall), and ran it directly from the battery.
