I've personally seen 2 suzuki 300 king quads with bad regulators and have helped others online identify bad regulators. Its to the point that I'm assuming any 300 king quad made in any year is going to have a bad regulator by default. Obviously its a design flaw. So, what is it about the regulator that goes bad? And why?

I believe the rectifiying part of the circuit is still good, but the regulator fries. Mine bulged out the back and cracked the epoxy.

If I'm understanding this right, 60v AC 3-phase is rectified into DC and regulated at 14.4v. If the voltage tries to go above 14.4, the regulator dumps current to ground in an effort to bring the voltage down. So, assuming the alternator is operating within design parameters and not supplying more wattage than the regulator can handle, why would the regulator burn out? I wouldn't think hooking up things like winches, lights, etc would harm the regulator since those would cause a large voltage drop anyway and the regulator would be doing nothing. Right? It seems the only thing to hurt a regulator would be a wattage source. Right?

So why are all the regulators going bad and how can I fix the problem without having to buy another bad regulator?