new question before I go ahead and put this new alternator on I was wondering if the alternator would truely be the cause of the high current sparking that was going on through the battery??? Because this morning before I went through all of this and thought my original problem was the battery, I hooked up my friends battery to test it out and when I went to do that I got smoke coming from the starter area... I did some more research and found thats where the electrical distrubtion throughout the car starts off at and people said I could be in for a great deal of trouble since smoke came from that area. I checked all the fuses and fusible links and they all looked good. Also after the smoke session stoped I was able to hook up my original battery back to the car with little sparking and I was even able to start the car up and check to make sure everything was working which is true, everything does work except the fact that my alternator wasnt charging my system up. So I got the alternator tested and it in fact does not work anymore and I was going to replace it but I didnt want to hook this alternator up only to find that once again I have a high current situation where I cant hook up the battery again.. IS there anything else I should check before I get started on this job??? Once again the car started up normally and everything worked so I dont think any of the main components are done for I just want to make sure nothing little that might not have been significant with starting the car is gone..