Posted by David Sherman on Monday, October 11, 2004 at 0:00AM :
In Reply to: Re: Ground wires burning up! posted by stephen on Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 10:11PM :
Anything between the supposed-to-be-grounded battery post and the starter could be the problem. Checking each connection with a voltmeter saves "shotgunning" it by taking everything apart and cleaning every connection. Basically, if a wire that isn't supposed to be carrying much current is overheating, it can only be because the wire that's supposed to be carrying the current is not doing its job.
In my experience, those battery-cable "repair" ends that clamp onto the cable via a small steel strap account for most bad connections. You can sand everything shiny and put them back together and they'll work for a little while, but they will always be trouble. I prefer a crimped-and-soldered eyelet on the cable, attached to a mil-spec battery clamp, which you can get for about $2.40 apiece from McMaster-Carr. This allows you to replace the clamp if it gets bunged up without having to replace the whole cable and without using the aforementioned bad-connection type of clamp. I often replace the standard bolts that come with those mil-spec clamps with stainless-steel ones so there's absolutely no corrosion problem. For a couple dollars extra per cable up front, you can save tons of frustration and guesswork down the road.