'71 Duster 340 Battery getting overcharged

MrDuster said

My green wire was not connected to anything as per the auto zone guru's advice...it was just hanging out there all lonely...what would be the impact of that?

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To answer your question directly, in addition to what the others have stated, the idiot crackhead at AutoZoo sold you a alternator with one of the field connections grounded. That is why there is no connection for the green wire from the regulator. The result is you have full charging system voltage on one field connection and ground on the other so you get all the voltage the alternator can produce at all times.

With the correct alternator and the regulator connected the voltage regulator controls the alternator field voltage by interrupting the ground circuit. The blue ignition wire on the voltage regulator in essence tells the regulator what the current voltage is so it can adjust the alternator output accordingly by varying the the field current to ground. Basically, the field current acts as the throttle control for the alternator output voltage.