Have seen the threads on adding a wire from alternator straight to the battery, bypassing the factory ammeter. When the battery is in the trunk should I run a 8ga directly to battery or just over to the starter and hook it up with the pos bat cable there? 
Don't see why the extra length of cable to the battery would make a difference if all of the grounds are good especialy to the motor. The voltage should balance throughout the system, like when maintaining a remote trailer battery.
As for bypassing the ampmeter you only need to stop the charging flow across it for safety reasons. The black (alt) wire is the one that would be eliminated. When the black wire is relocated (to maintain the charging circuit), it definitly needs to be fused though.
IMO, ampmeter fires happen because the factory fusable link is on the battery side of the ampmeter, so an overload has to go through the meter first. Another "fusable link"??
