Well i'm driving home today, my radio suddenly shuts off and car dies. So since its in the middle of church hour traffic on one of the busiest roads in town i get out and push my car out of the intersection. I get it to a parking lot, get out notice that the front is smoking. I open to hood to see the battery swelling, it wasn't antifreeze smoking, it was battery acid boiling. All i have is my pocket knife since i left my tools at home (which i rarely do). I cut the negative battery cable off the terminal and popped a cap off the battery it finally stops spewing. I wondered why my fuse block didn't stop the alternator. Then i look down and the wire is basically welded to the engine bay, along with the positive wire coming from the battery. So i took my alternator to a local shop, the regulator was bad it basically charged wide open. I'm guessing what happened was the alternator charged wide open blew several fuses in the box, melted the rubber on the wires creating a dead short for the battery when it touched the wheel well. so all in all today has sucked, on a positive note an elderly woman saw me pushing my car and brought me water since were in a terrible heat wave. Has anyone had this happen to them? what can i do to keep it from happening again? I will post pictures when i get this disassembled. I just had to Vent