[petek]

The one-wire alternators are the way to go (in my opinion).

(Gross oversimplification follows... )

A normal alternator needs a battery hooked up to it so that the field windings become energized. With the field windings energized the rotor windings spun by the pulley can produce electricity. The faster the engine spins the faster the rotor spins and the more electricity is produced. Problem is, we want to keep the output of the alternator around 13.8 volts.

So to keep the output at 13.8 volts the voltage regulator changes the amount of current flowing into the field windings. Less current in the field = less output voltage from the alternator.

A one-wire alternator does all of this with an internal regulator. When the engine is first spun up the one-wire alternator takes a little bit of current from the battery to initialize the field windings. Once the alternator is producing current it can energize it's own field windings (through it's internal voltage regulator) and really doesn't even need to be connected to the battery anymore.

One down-side to a one-wire alternator is that you loose your charge-failure lamp (the one that says "ALT"). Most one-wire alternators have a way of adding the ALT lamp, but I just use a voltmeter instead.