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It depends on how you have the ammeter wired. On my 2N, the wire from the alternator passes through the ammeter loop and then to the terminal block. With this wiring, the ammeter only reads the current coming from the alternator -- the result is a big slug of current (the "30 amps" you report) that falls back to about 3 amps after five or ten seconds. If you wire the ammeter so that it can measure the current to AND from the battery, you'll still see the big slug of current but the ammeter should read zero after five or ten seconds. 'Course, the ammeter might not read exactly zero -- you've got to compare the reading while the tractor is running to that when it's not running. The difference between the two is that when you measure just the charging current (the first case), you'll see the alternator providing the current that runs the ignition system. In the second case, the ammeter measures the net current to or from the battery and won't show the current to the ignition system.
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