alternator scavenger hunt

I knew that my car's alternator was circling the drain, over the past four months I noticed that it was recharging the battery at lower and lower levels. Last weekend I decided to drop by my parents to set up domain hosting for my parents. As I was turning on to their street my car started to stall. For a lack of any better idea of what to do I stomped on the gas, given stalling while sideways on a high traffic street would be a really bad idea. Luckily the car lurched to life just enough to make it through the intersection and maintained a weak pulse until it finally died as I was pulling into their driveway.

After talking with my dad and locating an auto parts store that 'claimed' to have a new alternator in-stock, we sent my mom after it and we started taking out the old alternator. Naturally about the time we finally yanked the old alternator out of the car is when we got the call informing us that the alternator the auto parts store thought they had was clearly a very dead alternator. I should mention that this was 8pm on Easter Sunday, it was starting to rain, my car windows where all down and the car only had power windows.

We managed to get the windows covered in plastic and taped down before the monsoon hit. On the third attempt, I located an alternator that was 1) the right model and 2) functional and we managed to install the new one in time to make it to my morning staff meeting.