got home today and popped my hood only to see a "light" shining on the side of my intake, so i move around the side to find out what it is and the hot wire bolt going into the back of the alt was glowing red like it just got welded! WTF! any ideas where to start looking for the problem

 

holy cow. check for resistence in the line.

 

You are probably looking at the problem. When current is flowing the points of high resistance generate the most heat.

That line is fused so if there was a dead short it'd blow the fuse. If the alternator was still working and the bolt was glowing red then you can't have a dead short before the fuse or the alternator would probably have burned up before you noticed. What was the battery voltage when it was like this?

Once it completely cools off disconnect the battery, remove the nut, clean both sides of the ring terminal with fine grit sandpaper, clean the nut and mating surface on the alternator and re-assemble. I don't know the torque spec for the nut but it needs to be snug to keep that a low resistance connection.

 

found the problem. the black plastic piece broke/melted, i snuged everything tight and it appears to ok now

 

The problem is most likely that there is a tiny bit of corrosion in the connection so it has a high resistance and heats up when there is a lot of current flowing, that heat melts the plastic. Unless you took the ring terminal off and cleaned it, the surface of the nut and the surface of the terminal on the alternator you are probably going to have this problem again.

 

damnit! i only cleaned the surfaces on the alt itself

 

At least with the N/A it's really easy to reach, just disconnect the battery and clean up everywhere it has to conduct electricity and you should be good to go