put a new battery on my ford 555 after trying to jump start. put on the positive cable first and as soon as I touched the negative terminal to post the alternator started smoking and fried. any ideas? worked fine last time I used it and have tried jump starting it once with no trouble but now...poof
You're SURE you didn't mix up the cables jumping or with the battery? Not doubting you, just saying that statistically-that's what happened. So you tried jumpstarting it with jumper cables? or a booster/charger? And it smoked from hooking up the battery AFTER you were cranking it over jumpstarting it? The only thing I come up with is the alternator went bad, and drained the old battery, started heating up with the jumpstarting, then melted down when you hooked up the new battery?
you went negative to positive.nice to know iam not the only one.makes a guy feel bad
If you boosted and connected the cables correctly, "negative to negative" and "positive to positive",, your old battery may have been shorted and shorted the alt or, vice vice-versa.
Absolutely hooked the cables up correctly. When I tried to jump it the tractor wouldn't do anything. I found a bare spot in the positive cable that I'm pretty sure was contacting metal. Could that have caused it?
Yes, that would burn out an alternator and battery.
Mystery solved. Also, if it's a delco alternator, you may be able to buy a parts kit cheaper than a rebuilt alternator, most likely the diodes were doing the smoking. If the alternator doesn't have a tach drive or anything else unusual, then you can get a cheap rebuilt anywhere.