ill start by saying that i have a 98 civic ex with a gsr swap. i just replaced the headgasket, pcv box gasket and other random parts and in doing so i took out the whole harnes to check everything out. i didnt remove anything from the fire wall. well, now that everything is back together i went to hook up the battery to start it. everything seemed fine then i went to start it it just clicked. so i tried again and nothing worked. everything went dead. i checked the battery and the battery terminals started smoking. they were hot!!! it turns out the only other really hot wire was the tranny ground. i took my battery and got it tested and it was fine. it got cold and dark so i couldnt check anything else but does anyone have any ideas? i have a couple. check condition of ground wire and connections. is there anything else i should look for? it might not be the right thing to do but if you hook up the negative of the battery first then try to hook up the positive, the thing sparks like crazy. there should be no drain right? the key is out of the ignition. any ideas?

 

bump, could use some help

 

are you sure the battery is not backwards? hooking up power to the chassis?

 

Make sure the polarity is correct. Or, Sounds like you've miswired something large to ground somewhere to generate that amount of heat at the battery without smoking somewhere else.

 

lol.

dude your starter wire is arc-ing to your chassis. I've seen this happen 2352 times to apprentices in my shop.

9/10 the starter wire is arcing to the starter and all the amperage is killing and blowing your ground cables. Un-hook the battery, pull the big power wire off the starter and check to see if there are any arc marks on the starter, wire, etc.

 

btw I did this on my own car back when I had to do a quick starter change. The S wire on the soleniod was at a different spot so i had to bend the wire in an awkward way. Started up fine for a day but eventually i went to start it and the car died and i smelt smoke. Popped the hood looked at the battery and the neg. cable was smoking so was the insulator on the tranny ground. I knew immediately what the problem was.

Happens to the best of us Hopefully thats your problem! If so, lets hope it did no damage!