What can you damage from jump starting?

[FinalDrive]

My '95 s14 has been sitting for 3 months so the battery was dead. A neighbor and I tried to jump start it and something went wrong. He hooked the cables up to the good battery first and it sparked when the neg. cable was hooked to my battery. After that, the high beams on my car came on even though the switch was off. The car still wouldn't start...

Thats what I get for being on the phone while he was hooking everything up

I'm thinking the harness shorted somewhere or the ECU is fried maybe?

[Dream240]

Check your fuses.... sounds like he put the jumper wires on your car backwards.

[Taniguchi_Is_#1]

Check your fuses.... sounds like he put the jumper wires on your car backwards.


x 2. cross your fingers and hope the fusible links didn't blow. they're kinda pricey.

[240trainee]

Yea, sounds like they went on backwards. Did that to my car once, was really tired and not paying attention, thankfully, it only blew the main fuse.

[g6civcx]

Jump-starting, even when done "properly", may damage the entire electrical system of both cars, including all fuses and ECUs.

If you're lucky, you only blew some fuses, like what was said above. Check every single fuse in both fuseboxes again and see what happens.

[drift freaq]

direct battery to batter neg connections can short shit out. If you ever notice when tow guys jump a car , they always attach the neg side to the car being jumped to a ground and not the battery neg gnd terminal. Batteries can also blow up directly connected. It can and does happen from time to time.

[hello]

direct battery to batter neg connections can short shit out. If you ever notice when tow guys jump a car , they always attach the neg side to the car being jumped to a ground and not the battery neg gnd terminal. Batteries can also blow up directly connected. It can and does happen from time to time.

that's what i was going to say..

NEVER go battery to battery! next time find a better ground on your car.

just in case...
red=positve
black=negative

[Dream240]

that's what i was going to say..

NEVER go battery to battery! next time find a better ground on your car.

just in case...
red=positve
black=negative

Strut tower, just use the lip or one of the strut studs.

[g6civcx]

just in case...
red=positve
black=negative

This is helpful for 99% of the time, but don't rely on colour-coding to determine polarity. You never know what people do, including painting their battery terminals.

Don't even rely on the (+) and (-) markings either, because other parts of the world go backward from the US.

Look at the actual connections coming out of the battery terminals. Usually the hot side has a bunch of accessories drawing power, and the ground terminal goes straight to chassis ground.

Also don't count on the other guy hooking his battery up right either.

The bottom line is you never know how stupid some people can be.

[Skinner]

the very first time i ever use jumper cables, i hooked them up backwards and my highbeams came on but i didnt think anything of it.. untill the the jumper cables started smoking and melting!

no damage was done to either car thank god.

[g6civcx]

The lights came on because light bulbs are non-polarity, i.e. they don't care which way current flows through.

When you hooked up the wires backward, you're forcing current to flow backward from the ground to the battery. The light bulb sees this and lights up.

The rest of your accessories, especially your ECU, do not like this backward flow of current!