Stupid evil car. This car is has given nothing but pain on common repairs, nothing goes right.

Here's the problem, sparks (arc sparks) and coming from the fan pulley and alt tensionor. I mean major blue sparks. Only when the car is running. Can't reproduce them when the car is not running (but key in ign), touching the two areas with a wrench.

First question: Is alt grounded as positive? The wires from the starter (red) that seem to connect to it are on the metal casing of the altenator. Is there some sort of insulation that goes on or inbetween the metal studs?

Yes, the alt wires were degraded and I did fix them up with tape, weeks ago. I don't suspect these wires. But I did use a big washer and that may ground the alt tensioner bar.

Here's what led to this. Firstly, the alt tensioner bolt that connects to the block broke inside. After alot of aggravation, I managed to put in heli coil. This this did slightly change the position of the alt tensioner, hence some contact with the pump pulley. Yesterday, I was resealing the water pump which was leaking (again ran into stripped water pump studs that were stripped and a major pain to replace). That seemed to have caused this problem.

Today the car died. It ran fine for a while, but then just died. No battery juice. I checked the alt brushes, wires, ect. All good. Gave it a jump, started. Died again. Jumped it and now I white flashes next to the water pump pulley?

Also, can I put a 55amp alt, spare alt that I have in this car?