haromaster87

Hey guys,
I had probly the most scary experience ever today. I went to the store, got some canned goods, came outside and thats were it started. I hopped in the stang and got ready to fire it up. But it acted like it had a dead battery, then it almost started. So when I went to start it again, nothing happened... Accept a cloud of thick white smoke poured outa the hood. In the 6 sec it took me to grab the hood release and open the hood, I had 3 nervous breakdowns. lol I opened the hood relieved to find no live flame. Just more white smoke, coming from the smaller batter ground wire(for accesories). It had apperantly shorted out, heated up, and burned through 40% of the wire sleeve. I didn't know what to do. So I called my buddy and he headed up there to help me. But first some nice old mechanic stopped to help me. He explained what had happened and all. He told me to go get a new battery clamp, trim the engine ground cable back to behind were the accesory had melted into it, and replace the accesory ground with some nice thick cable. He say's he thinks it may've shorted out. Either way I headed up to discount auto, got some THICK battery cable, and a new universal clamp. I wired it like it used to be and came up with this...



As you can see, I got some thick wire. I couldn't wire it back up into the clamp thing the factory ground was in, so I just used the bolt that held the factory ground on to ground it. The thick clear cable is my replacement accesory ground and the smaller black cable is the trimmed engine ground. Does all this look okay? Should it give me any trouble? Also, anyone know what might've caused the initial problem? Heres a pic of the origional ground, and a chunk of the engine ground(thicker wire)

Boss_Hotrod

You probably shorted your positive nad negative cables togother. Anytime you short something striaght from the battery with no protection device you are going to melt wires. Personally Id relocate that new wire and get it off the positive terminal. Thats just asking for trouble. My cable is routed from the front of the battery around the back of it and then grounded in the factory location.

Ill go get a pic of it.

[IMG]local://upfiles/35342/F36CDD166DB946EE8151E9D27D0FAB90.jpg[/IMG]

haromaster87

Ah, that looks really nice. I just went out there and fiddled with it but it didn't wanna move. It doesn't sit on the + terminal though, it goes over it. I'll straighten it out eventually. Right now there's no contact.

monkeyboy

looks like there was alot of electrical tape on the old ground before......... Did somebody make a temporary fix on it?. It's hard to keep electric tape on some thing thats dirty and greasy. It looks like the tape came off in the middle and shorted against something. Does the cable run close to your starter solenoid? But your new ground cable will work fine as long as your conections are all tight.

mjr46

when the neg battery cable melts up like that it is due to high resistance in a connection or the cable itself.......clean all connections and replace cable as you did

lxman1

I agree, what probably happened is that your large ground cable has deteriorated and when you tried to start the car, you sent a few hundred amps of current thru the small cable because it had nowhere else to go and it melted the chassis ground. Make sure that the block ground is good at the block.

cleanfitty

I'm not sure if I understood it properly, but the thick cable shoud be run to the block ground. This is the cable that carries the high amperage when turning the engine over. The skinnier one should go to the body and the accesory ground.

haromaster87

Well, the block ground had the thicker cable. It's still a pretty good sized cable. But that's not the one that burnt up. The accesory one burnt up so whenI replaced it I just upped the gauge for ****s and giggles.

brentloftis

Go over your starter relay, take it off and check it out completely, if this happened after cranking or trying to crank I would imagine this would be the root cause. Luckily it was when you were there, my friend lost his Eclipse after a poor amp install ran a power lead under the car without a fuse.

lxman1

If the large cable is bad, it will fry the small one because that's where the power goes trying to run the starter. My ground cable failed internally years ago, a shop even tried told me the starter was bad because it was drawing 700amps when hot. The new starter did the same thing. Replaced the engine ground cable and I haven't had any problems since.