A friend of mine called me from 1500 miles away. He hooked the battery up backwards in his 87 Ford Ranger. He said smoke came out of a plastic box near the battery. When he connected the battery up the correct way the truck is dead. I'm guessing he fried a fusible link. Never owning a Ranger I have no idea what is in the plastic box he's telling me about. Any guesses? What are the chances the computer survived?
Al
Could it be a fuse block, or is that under the dash? Or maybe a massive connector for the wire harness? Did it smoke when he hooked it up or when he tried to start it? I had an '89 Ranger and I don't recall a lot of complicated BS under the hood. If it smoked when he tried to start it he would have shorted the battery out thru the solenoid which would surely melt the solenoid contacts. Might have also burned up diodes in the alternator. What a mess....
Not to hijack a thread or dis FORD but that reminds me of a story. I actully observed a '60's vintage VW microbus with the battery installed backwards, and running! The guy had bought a 6 to 12v convertor from the RS store I worked at and it was blowing fuses. After he fried the second one I went out in the parking lot to see what's up and observed a 6 volt battery with the positive side grounded. He had installed the new battery several weeks before and it had acted funny but was seemingly working fine. As I watched he removed the battery, turned it around and reinstalled it with neg ground. I told him to polorize the voltage regulator at the very least, some voodoo that was usually performed when you installed a new one, which he did. He proceeded to start the darn thing up. The generator light lit for a few minutes, went out and everything was fine! I have no clue why no damage was done, or the battery hadn't exploded! I suppose because it was a generator instead of an alternaor and an old type voltage regulator.
Actually, it's the generator that sometimes needed to be polarized, not the regulator.
Dave
Have him check the box for diodes. And obvious sources of smoke being let out of the components.
"Big Al" snipped-for-privacy@qwest.net wrote in message news:7FE8f.88$ snipped-for-privacy@news.uswest.net... | A friend of mine called me from 1500 miles away. He hooked the battery up | backwards in his 87 Ford Ranger. He said smoke came out of a plastic box | near the battery. When he connected the battery up the correct way the truck | is dead. I'm guessing he fried a fusible link. Never owning a Ranger I have | no idea what is in the plastic box he's telling me about. Any guesses? What | are the chances the computer survived? | | Al | |
It smoked immediately. He didn't get a chance to do anything. It all happened in a few seconds.
On an old vehicle once the generator is polarized backwards it doesn't care. In the old days, Fords were positive ground and other cars were negative ground. Putting a battery in backwards was an common thing.
Al
PS: Thanks for stealing my thread:)
He more than likely blew a fuseable link. These are in series from the starter solenoid wiring point (useally were the cable from the bat goes) to the fuse block. One of the uses of the fusable link is to burn out if the bat voltage is backwards. dave
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