So I was going to put in a new distributor and I decided I'd pull the battery terminals just to be safe. Now that I think about it I probably should have unhooked just the negative but whatever. I got both off and I look down and theres a third wire with a smaller metal clamp that looks like it would fit around a screw (Shaped like a circle with a section cut out. The wire leading to it is red so I figure it goes to the positive terminal, I hook up the negative terminal then go to put this little wire on the bolt to the positive terminal and I get an arc of sparks. I don't get this when I touch it to the negative terminal but at this point I'm too scared to try anything else, I don't want to kill myself or my car. HELP!

 

Ok so it has a black fuse attached to it so I'm assuming its the postive wire to my car stereo. I don't know why it's arcing though.



For anyone curious, it was a positive lead to the stereo and I just had to shove it on there and bolt it down regardless of the sparks, works now.


Modified by SLH356 at 1:04 PM 7/16/2006

 

Well it's ok if it sparks, but if it's like arcing to it. Then there's a short somewhere. The wire insulation might be broken and the wire itself it probably grounding on the car.