Ahhhh, good read
Now I understand the exciter wire principle, was scratching my head over marks but couldn't figure it out.
Now I also understand the point of having the systems separate.
The PROBLEM is having two alternators connected to each other.
However, what if you want more amperage on one system?
The way my car is now wired, only the starter and mega squirt system (thus fuel pump, injectors, coil packs, ecu etc) runs off battery 1 and everything else runs off battery 2
I have split charge and 1 alternator.
If I fitted 2 alternators I would still only have the same amperage available (it doesn't use many amps to run the engine tbh) yet I would have half the battery amperage available to sup from as the batteries would then we separate.
As such I'd have one alternator doing 0 running the engine and one working its socks off doing everything else.
The reason I wired the car like this is so that I can use everything all night long at camp but still start the car the next day.
The problem is that the main circuits use so little amps when running it seems daft to put a single alternator on that circuit.
On that basis I think I'd be better keeping split charge and going up to a high output say 200amp alternator single install.
Problems there for me include not having enough friction on a single V belt to drive that many amps, and reliability of 1 alternator vs 2 as a backup.
Good thing is using split charge when winching you are drawing off both batteries which helps keep your voltage up, I can only pull 100amp across my split charge but that would be sufficient.
As it stands I have probably 65 amps of light on the car now and in fairness the alternator can be heard working when I'm burning the full rig and I'm not surprised if it is working close to capacity, adding the heated screen to the draw gave me a slight voltage drop but I was probably pulling 120amps out by that point.
I'm going to see how it goes with the current 70 but I think a single HO would work better for me as adding a second unit won't help me so much I don't think.
Sorry for waffle based hijack!