No start, no crank

[Chugalug]

My 1989 s13 failed to start this morning though the battery is a known good one. I got no crank from the starter and no click from the solenoid. Noticed the battery connection at the starter solenoid was a bit loose so I tightened it up and still no start. Tried to jump it with another battery and got large sparks + high current through jumper cables. Shit a massive brick, yanked those suckers off and noticed no power to clock/accessories.

Detached negative terminal and did some poking around/checking fuses. Re attached negative terminal (produced some serious sparks in the process) and heard a nice little pop/click from somewhere under the hood. Now I have clock/accessory power but my starter wont crank. No more sparks from the battery.

I've been reading this is probably a short somewhere but I've spent some time looking and come up empty handed. Suggestions and insight are very welcome.

[Icy13]

I feel like a broken record, but this fixed my mysterious start issue AND was featured on CarTalk so, what the hell, give it a try:

Check the clutch interlock relay (or in auto, the park/neutral relay) which is the 30A relay to the starter. $10 fixed a mysterious and maddening problem in my s14, may as well give it a try.

[Flexin]

guy above me sounds right, but if its sparks everywhere it sounds like they are attached to ground and not the actual terminals

[Chugalug]

Starter solenoid had a hairline fracture and a loose terminal. The short might have been produced at the solenoid. I replaced the starter and now have no problems. This was a strange situation because the starter died without warning overnight instead of a typical failure over a longer period of time.

Also if I'm not mistaken Canadian s13's (1989 & 1990 model year at least) do not have the clutch interlock switch mentioned earlier. FSM suggests it's on usdm models only.

Thanks for the replies!