CS130, 100 AMP, 3 wire alternator...

I put a rebuilt alternator in last week, charged fine, go out this morning and its not charging, so i get a warantee alternator from the rebuilder and in the mean time charge and load test the battery, all is good.

So i put the new alternator in and it charges fine, drive it from the parking lot into the garage, shut it off, put new connectors on the wiring for the field and such, start it up and its charging at 16.8 volts, so i shut it off, start it again and its not charging again.

It seems like the regulators are blowing, i think it went to full field then overheated itself and now won't charge.

The other thing is that the alternator "field" wire has no resistance in it, I've been told to wire it with some resistance, either a bulb or resistor, when i run a resistor in line it fried the resistor...but i ran the original gm alternator for 2 years with no issues. It is run straight to a switched 12v source...

The other other thing is i tore the rubber boot that goes on the backside of alternator over the battery post, and the post is about 3/8" from my valve cover, so could i have arcing across that gap ?? Would that fry the regulator, We had it running for 2-3 mins and checking the charge when it was near 17 volts and there was no snapping that would have signified arcing.

I'm going to get one more tomorrow, throw a new insulator boot on and see what happens, we have a parts guy that used to work for the parts store that i got the rebuilt from and he said he's had problems with them.

Any ideas??