318 Running Richer w/ Carb Swap

twood16 said

While idling I had 14.29 reading at the battery, hot side of coil and correspondingly at the hei module. But yeah 16.5+ depending on revs on the negative side is odd. Pulled my feed to the positive side of the coil right from dark blue wire that fed to the left side of the ballast resistor that is now eliminated. I feel like I'm in another issue that probably needs its own thread now lol

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Possibly! Bummer..
I had a similar experience though. Was working on an efi install, and then smoked the fusible link. Figured it had to be related, but in the end it was just a bad regulator which also took out the alt (overcharge due to shorted field, then the field smoked).
Checking the voltage at the field wiring will tell you if the regulator is working OK. Checking field resistance can tell you if the alt is mostly OK.
Long before the efi, and in a different car, I once had an alt with a flying short. The voltage would only spike over 3k rpm, consistently. Had to replace the alt. It was like a switch got flipped when it happened.
Probably not your problem if your voltage rises steady with rpm, which would be caused by excess field current - either a short in the field wiring, or the regulator.