I know this game had a huge fan following way back. silly questions anyone know of any good 3rd party unit sites and how to add them?

Well, there is the TA File Universe, which is basically a nexus for much TA-related stuff.
If you're specifically looking for units, check out this page.
UPDATE
The Total Anihilation Unit Compilation Pack is probably THE single most robust unit pack, and comes with its own frontend to enable/disable it and its custom AIs. You can grab it from here, for example.

Does TAUCP still fubar save games?

What do you mean? When I saved a game while using TAUCP, I could load that game in TAUCP.
Or does it supposedly corrupt pre-install vanilla TA saves, which you can't load even if you're not running the mod?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/total-annihilation-escalation/videos/escalation-online-play-2

total escalation looks very nice to, its also hosted at the tauniverse forums, i didnt read about it too much and didnt plan to download it too soon (i want to do the campaigns vanilla - including the last 6 units first), but it will be downloaded not too late either ^^

I know that one, and I think it's a pretty decent mod. It also features many units, but doesn't feel as "overkill" as TAUCP. It introduces some novel concepts, for example, the "Mantle Extractor" (a third-level metal extractor), which supplies you with metal you need to build the most powerful units.
However, I've found its skirmish AI somewhat lacking, especially on some custom maps (on some, it only built two metal extractors and a solar collector, then proceeded to wait for my armies to raze down its "base").

thanks guys ...now dumb question 2 any map sights left I know TAMEC is gone :(

Check out my suggestion.
Or, you can also get maps from TA Universe.

Corrupted saves at random with the mod installed.

I don't know about that, but the latest version is pretty old, so I guess if it was the case earlier, it's the case now, too.
I didn't have any saves from before installing TAUCP, so I can't say anything about that, but after disabling it (with its own frontend) I could play, save and load vanilla games.