No start after replacing positive battery cable

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Hi Joe,

Thanks for the info. You gave me a starting point, and my next door neighbor is an electrician/engineer. With the wire diagram you provided and a fuse box diagram downloaded from an online version of the owner's manual, we solved the problem. It turns out I had reconnected two vital wires in the wrong places.

When I began this job, I had serious misgivings about messing with the main wire harness in the engine compartment. I was afraid of cutting a wrong wire or nicking something that would cause a short that wouldn't be easy to diagnose or getting confused by too many disconnected parts and reassembling something wrong. I had good reason for these fears because, in my case, one came true.

I started out with replacing the fuse, as you suggested; hoping the simple solution would be the one I needed. My fuse was blown, so I got a new one and promptly blew out the new fuse (at position 19). Okay.I knew I had no loose connections, but I checked anyway and found I had no loose connections. Again, okay. The last, slightly more daunting task for me was checking the power at the starter as you suggested. I am by no means electrically inclined and, although I have a multi-meter and a continuity tester, I have no confidence in using them correctly. I soldiered on though, and checked for power at the starter as you suggested and found there was no power in the post with the key on or off. This is where my neighbor came in and he began checking for power and shorts in various locations, all related to the circuit between the battery and the starter and he soon zeroed in on the wire coming off of the starter relay post you mentioned. He asked me where the wire to that post went too, and of course I had no idea, so (to my horror) he began splitting the wire harness again to discover the origin of the wire because he was beginning to think we had the wrong wire diagram or there was a short in the wire somewhere (possibly from me cutting the positive battery cable and nicking something ) or, even, me having cut the wrong wire (the positive battery wire is red and there is another red wire of the same gauge inside the wire harness). He was splitting the harness back up toward the battery from the starter, when, almost finished, we discovered it was the negative battery cable. That's not right!

I know it sounds stupid now, with the wire diagram in front of us and the wire harness split wide open baring all the wires for all to see, but looking back to see a mistake and ridiculing it is a lot easier to do than thinking about how to try to solve a problem, putting together a plan to fix it, executing the plan, getting it right and adjusting for inevitable errors. I had no idea I had flipped the harness and wired the negative battery cable (black in the wire diagram) to the starter and the starter relay wire (brown/green in the diagram) to the engine block. In my eyes, I had simply reconnected two very similar looking wires to where I thought they belonged. You see, the wire harness looks like a thick corrugated black plastic pipe covered with black electrical tape as you follow it from the battery to the starter, with junctions where other corrugated pipes (or just wires) split off it or join into it. At a point near the starter, there is a junction where two wires leave the main branch, but on opposite sides of the harness. This junction looks like a plus. Although the one wire is slightly bigger than the other, without knowing what the wires are or what they do or without taking a photo (a lesson I continually have to learn due to haste or lack of thought) of the junction and its components and their destinations, makes this mistake an easy one to have occur. The wire diagram does not represent the actual routing of the wires, so it doesn't show you that both those red wires run alongside one another, along with the black wire from the battery and the brown/green wire from the starter relay. I know wire diagrams are useful tools for engineers and electricians but routing diagrams would be just as useful for DIYers and mechanics/technicians. I am sorry that routing diagrams are no longer produced (another victim of space savings and cost cutting, I assume). Hindsight also informed me that, had I planned on splitting the wire harness all the way from the battery to the starter to begin with, I could have saved that $115 difference between the battery cable and the cable terminal because there was plenty of slack in the cable, once it was freed from the bondage of the harness. However, (again, hindsight) I never had plans to do all that work to split the entire cable length because of the fears I had and the work to rebind/re-tape/rebuild the wire harness quadrupled my workload. Now I know why Ford's solution is to just cut the two ends off and leave the remainder in the harness.

So, thanks for giving me a place to start. The car starts now and runs as it should. I would like to know, however, what to do about the corrosion problem that started all this in the first place. I don't want to have to replace another terminal in the future (although, it would probably be easier to do a second time around!). I put a felt spacer under each of the battery terminals and sprayed each post/terminal with battery protectant that can be purchased at any auto parts store. Is that sufficient or, as I asked in the beginning, should I buy a different kind of battery (if that is possible)?

Thanks,
Tony

Joe,

Thank You. I'm just glad there is a service like this that I can rely on. I can't afford to buy the repair manuals for my vehicles from the automobile manufacturers (overvalued). Services like Alldata and Mitchell are costly (ongoing costs). The Chilton and Haynes manuals aren't specific enough and usually are too generic covering too many model years. Finally, searching the web doesn’t always produce reliable results. Many times I’ve found similar problems, but not exactly my model or situation. Sometimes, there just isn’t an answer to be found.

I love using 2CarPros because the times I have used it I've gotten responses within a reasonable time frame, I've gotten the reference materials I've needed, I've gotten friendly, encouraging, well thought out advice and accurate diagnoses (as long as I give accurate, well described problems; I hate it when I see someone wanting to know what is wrong with something without even describing all the "givens" like the problem, circumstances, equipment, make, model, etc.). And, I get to pass on what I've learned.

Thanks again.

Take care,
Tony