Bad Monday! Electrical problem!

[kxmotox247]

Definately a bad start to my day. I hope everyone reads this and maybe learns a lesson in advance of actually having it happen.
I bought another old truck...a 67'...last week.
Anyway, I was on my way to work about 6:30 this morning. I was only 3 minutes from home when I started seeing some kind of smoke coming out from under the hood. I immediately pulled over and the smoke started getting thicker. I popped the hood and the wire from my alternator back to my battery was frying!
Every bit of insulation was completely melted off. I was just praying that a fire wouldn't start up and burn up the truck.
I haven't had a good chance to look things over yet but here's what I think happened:
+12V wire to the battery from the alternator had some extra slack in it where somehow it ended up laying on the exhaust mainfold. The insulation slowly melted off and then it grounded out against the manifold. Once it became grounded, the whole wire fried out like I saw.
To make it worse, when the wire fried, the hot metal strands touched the plastic air-ride lines and melted through in a few spots causing the truck to drop to the ground. The compressor couldn't catch up with the leaks and the truck remained on the ground...on the side of interstate 72...not a fun situation.
Fortunately I was able to get a ride back home to get a trailer to pull it home. The bad part is that no trailer sits low enough to pull a vehicle up on when the air bags are completely deflated. So another trip back home. I had to give in and call a flat bed wrecker. I used a ton of electrical tape to "mend" the lines enough to hold air. Thank god it held long enough to pull it up on the flatbed and get it home.
So here are the lessons:
1) Always carry a fire extinguisher with you. ( I'm an idiot...I have one in every other vehicle and I definately should have had one in an old truck "new" to me) Heck, we have two in the hot rod.
2) Always check over a new vehicle for safety issues such as this. I'm not mad at the previous owner at all. It could have happened at any time and I should have looked things over more carefully.
3) Always carry a roll of electrical tape!
4) Consider installing a battery disconnect to shut things down in an emergency.

Now the hard part comes in. I'm not real smart when it comes to wiring so I've got a huge mess of wires to sort out. My alterator wire melted into 4 or 5 other wires that run across the top of the radiator. I'm sure all of them will have to be replaced.
The truck won't turn over at all now. I'm not sure what else got cooked. Any ideas? Any fuses that would have blown? Fuseable link? Where would it be located? I might have cooked the battery or it's just really dead from running the air-ride compressor trying to fill up the bags.
Tough lesson for sure. At least I'm okay and the truck didn't burn up!
Please be safe.