amp gauge behavior

[Moriarty]

I mentioned in another thread that I noticed some odd behavior with my amp gauge. I took a video here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wVp...w?usp=drivesdk

Right at the beginning, you can see the meter goes from zero to pegged (+) directly proportional to rpm.

I've got a volt meter attached to the battery to see its charging and cut to that shortly after, but my wires weren't long enough to capture both in a single shot. Didn't see anything particularly odd there. I had put the battery on the charger for a bit before capturing this just to make sure the battery wasn't just low.

Then after turning off the engine, it occurred to me to hold the rpms for a bit to see if things settled down. However, this time when I went to test everything seemed to be working as expected.

Does this seem like a short somewhere? Voltage regulator going bad?

I guess I need to get some longer wires for the volt meter so I can see them both at the same time.

Side question: My amp gauge reads "Smith" but this is clearly just a sticker on the face. Any idea what the story is there?

EDIT: Oh.. also no longer centers on zero. I wonder if that's from pegging. I'm pretty sure it used to be properly centered, but never paid much attention. I think I would have remembered if it had been off though previously.

And yes, I should just do the volt meter modification. Before doing that, I'd like to sort out whatever else is going on to cause this.