I'm sorry, fellas, but I really can't keep quiet about this any more. It's one thing for one person to chase or believe a harebrained idea—that's one person's choice. I've spent money on home-hatched ideas knowing fully well the point of the exercise wasn't to make a better mousetrap (or alternator, starter, carburetor, whatever) but to do something differently. But now we've got people saying "Hey, sign me up", and some better information needs to be out there before more people go setting $250 on fire like this.
Darthomas, it's great that you have an alternator that behaves well, but you're not seeing what you think you're seeing. You've been sold a bill of goods by the guy you paid.
Your regulator points werent' sticking because your previous alternator wasn't hand-wound in an imaginary new way. You seem to know this; you said yourself: I really like seeing the ammeter behave as they did when the car
was new. When your car was new, it didn't have a special artisanally hand-wound $250 alternator on it. There are a couple of (real) reasons why your regulator points kept sticking with your previous alternator: The regulator was faulty by age or specification, or there was a short or other fault in the alternator's field circuit that was drawing excessive current, which was zap-welding the regulator points together. Your present replacement alternator has no such fault—that's all. You could've achieved that same fix (stop the regulator points sticking together) by installing any non-faulty alternator with an appropriately-matched regulator.
The mostly-imaginary change in how the stator is wound has not done anything like what you think it has; it has not created a situation where "much less field current should be called for to provide same output". That statement illustrates a pretty complete lack of comprehension of how the alternator works. This claim is much like saying “Ha! Guess what! I just halved the amount of work it takes to climb the staircase: now I climb ‘em two at a time!”.
In reality this is nothing but an unnecessarily long and expensive way to fix a very simple, basic problem. I would say shame on the guy you paid to do the work for not speaking up, but he didn't even have the proper tools to service a Chrysler alternator (pulley puller), so I don't suppose it's reasonable to expect much out of him.
I ran this thread by an old friend of mine with years of experience engineering, specifying, and bulding automotive rotating electrics (alternators and starters). His response:
"That thread makes my head hurt. There is quite literally no benefit to what he's done. The best of the bunch—the Denso hairpin alternators—have extremely good low- and high-RPM output not by increasing the winding density as this guy thinks he's done, but by increasing the number of magnetic poles the rotor intersects during its rotation."
Back to the practical matter at hand: You have an alternator that works well for you. Very good. That's fully achievable—yes, even the adequate output at idle—without pointless and expensive custom stator hand-winding. All it takes is an alternator with an appropriately selected and matched rotor and stator, driven by a pulley appropriately selected for the application, controlled by an appropriately specified and selected regulator, and with the whole charging system's wires, connections, and grounds all in good condition. With nothing more than those conditions met, I've lost count of how many works-but-poorly old Mopar charging systems I've made work well over the years (good idle output, steady charging voltage, etc).
Look in any year's factory parts cattledog and you'll see a whole whackload of different alternators: different amperage ratings, different pulley sizes, different applications. Then look in the parts breakdown for all those alternators and you'll see a bunch of different stators and rotors. That's what it looks like when the factory did exactly as I described: match the stator and rotor and pulley to the desired output characteristics and application.
(That is not to say the original alternator for any given car is necessarily the best one; f you study up on the differences in the Chrysler roundback & squareback alternators made between 1960 and 1988, you can find or build an alternator that looks original (or very close to original) on an old Mopar and puts out a lot more current than the original, including better low-RPM output. All without $250 worth of hand-wound imaginary "improvement"!)
Fact is, most of the shortcomings of Chrysler alternators aren't so much inherent to the breed as they are a result of thrown-together (mismatched) parts in "remanufactured" alternators. The "remanufacturing" outfits just throw all the rotors and stators in a bin and throw together whichever ones come to hand. Result: alternators with lousy low-RPM output. Alternators with flickery output. Alternators that draw marginally too much field current and cook regulators.
(Similar messes are made with the "high output conversion kits" that have been sold for years. Yes, you might get higher current output at high RPM, but your low-RPM output will suffer badly because the stator and rotor are no longer matched to the actual RPM range the alternator is to be used at.)
From the reman place's perspective, this is a "Who cares?" situation: nobody buys alternators for old Mopars any more, they sell for $45, and there's a lifetime warranty on 'em, so when it fails or someone who cares in more detail than "Does it charge?" doesn't like how it works, they bring it back to the parts store and get another one. Eventually they either get one they decide they can live with, or they give up.
As for an electronics engineer who prefers points-type ignition and points-type voltage regulators: everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but points-type regulators and ignitions are not better. They just plain aren't. The industry moved to electronics because they work better.
