Unless the fusible link - which is in series with the diodes and nothing else - opened in time to keep the diodes from being destroyed.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
On this particular car, no. Cable goes directly to the negative jump post/main body ground on the right front strut tower (and is clearly labeled as the negative jump post). There is a heavy cable going off of that neg. jump post that - I think - goes to the starter. There are some braided grounding straps from the right fender well (approx. 6 or 8 inches from the neg. jump post) going to the engine block.
But, in this car, not directly. There is a main cable going to the positive jump post - the red thing shown in the OP's first photo. There are two other cables from that pos. jump post - one goes to starter, the third goes to everything else (except alternator/generator). The second (smaller) wire coming off the battery cable clamp is the hot wire to the alternator/gernator.
Various systems have additional
FWIW, the OP's replacement battery has the same post arrangement as the original battery - but he has it rotated 180°. Perhaps the previous battery had been installed backwards *OR* he made the change when he put this battery in, but failed to re-arrange the cables to the opposite end of the battery compartment.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
The wiper controller is fried.
Most of the electronics in the car will need DC-DC converters, 12V is much to high to high for modern electronics so the voltage has to be converted to something usable (in the mid 90's that was probably 3.3V). The DC to DC converter modules should be diode protected so most of your electronic modules are probably OK. However the fact that the wiper module is busted is a worrisome sign. It may be that the wiper module is a relic of the 60s that ran directly off of 12V which is why it didn't have any protection. The microprocessors in the car can't possible use
12V so I would guess that they are OK. However I'm a computer engineer not an automotive electronics engineer so it's possible that I'm wrong.For future reference Red means HOT, Black means GROUND.
Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being hanged in the morning.
Dr. Johnson
Shorting a car battery can be fatal, the OP is very lucky that he got off with only a burned hand. When something is a life or death matter you check and the check again. I can see how a professional mechanic might get blase about batteries because they do it every day, but an amateur should treat the thing like it's a landmine. I've always gotten my replacement batteries at Sears, you leave the car for an hour, go to the food court and get an Orange Julius, and come back when it's done.
Hmmmm.... sounds like I may have forgotten a good story... ;-)
It started with, "it has to be in Drive when setting the idle speed, right?" and went downhill rapidly from there.
lol...beat me to it...it's not the volts that kill you, it's the amps. i was working on a 24 volt (2 12volt batteries) electric wheelchair once and i hadn't noticed the owner had put a non-standard plug on the charger cable. it had exposed prongs and it touched the metal frame....wow....fireworks and the plug welded itself to the frame while burning a hole in it...and this was heavy gauge chromed steel...and that was only a 100 amps system...
as you say, 700 amps can create quite a show.
Since areas of the body have a characteristic resistance, because of Ohm's law (for a given resistance, voltage and current are proportional), I've always thought that was an extremely ignorant cliché
- a way for semi-technical people to try to impress non-technical people, when in reality it shows ignorance (to the truly technical person). Either the person making the statement is ignorant of Ohm's law or its implications, or hasn't thought the meaning of the statement thru before making it. In reality it also comes down to what the impedance of the source of the voltage and current is (resistor divider effect), but on its face, the cliché shows ignorance.
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