battery guage drops right to zero? even when i just turn the key forward to on, the battery gage sits at normal for 3 secs and then drops to zero without even starting it
I would do voltage drop testing on the wires. Connect the black lead of your multimeter to negative battery terminal. Then with red lead go along starting at the regulator output (approx 14V) checking connections until you get to battery positive. If you lose more than .1V over a wire, that is bad. It could always just be a faulty guage too. If you have 14V (cold engine) or 13.8V (hot engine). When checking battery voltage everything is fine. I'm only saying this because you never said it died.
I almost forgot. These checks should be done with the engine running.
Check all you ground wires and fuses... may have a bad alternator.... if you can get it over to advance or autozone they will check the charging system for free... If you have a good batt but a bad alt the car will run until all the battery power is drained!