Crossed battery jumper cables

Having failed as a father to my 18 year old son who would prefer to surf his pocket oracle/ game machine rather than get his hands dirty working on cars, he apparently tried to jump his dead Legacy battery but wound up connecting the cables backwards. He swears to me he knew to go pos to pos and neg to neg but that he couldn't tell pos and neg on the jumping vehicle so he decided to take a 50% chance, especially when the old man "adult" told he and his friend it was hooked up OK.

So the original problem arose as he was sitting listening to music in the car waiting for his friend, car was off but he had not put key on accessory mode as he tells me all the dash lights were still on (another parental failure). After a few minutes he said the radio and the car went dead and wouldn't restart, no nothing, dead, or perhaps not quite dead but would not turn over (bat is 4 years old and on last legs). So they try jumping, there is a "big" spark when they hook cable up which the old man "adult" says is fine. But no change. So Dad comes with his tools and such, checks voltage at bat, 12.6, takes bat home and put on charger anyway, comes back, cleans cables, checks connections, nothing, jumps from Dad's Mazda, nothing (14.1 v) at cables now, nothing, check ignition fuses, removes fusible link (the 120Amp fuse in the engine fuse box), checks continuity with ohmeter and gets overload condition which indicates closed circuit (OK). Has car towed to shop ($120) gets call from owner next day that car is fixed ($105), ask what the problem was and he said that it appeared someone had hooked battery cable up backwards and it blew the main fuse, not knowing if that was same as the fusible link I pay with credit on phone since he was closing. Get car home and check and find that yes fusible link was replaced, so why did it not register an open circuit on my ohmmeter when I checked it? Perhaps there was a little thread of the fuse element still there? I could not see any carbon flash on the original. Anyways, just have to get that off my chest.

Not to be a dick but paragraphs make it much easier for those who might want to read this thread.

At least he used punctuation.

Glad you got it figured out, I was gonna suggest main fuse otherwise. Since that is fixed I do have something to add to this though...

Having failed as a father to my 18 year old son who would prefer to surf his pocket oracle/ game machine rather than get his hands dirty working on cars, he apparently tried to jump his dead Legacy battery but wound up connecting the cables backwards.....

I bet my dad felt the same way when I chose computers over cars/handy work. I hated car work because my dad can be short tempered and wouldn't make working on cars fun (face it fixing cars in freezing temps is never fun for a teenager).

Anyway, I now have 3-4 engine swaps under my belt, about 10 turbo swaps, 6 speed retrofit, and since I understand computers I tune my own cars.

Just saying, don't loose hope, if you want him to get into cars you should buy him mods for bday/xmas. I wish I had a turbo subi as my first car, I got into modding cars because I had a slow Nissan Sentra.

 

 

I bet my dad felt the same way when I chose computers over cars/handy work. I hated car work because my dad can be short tempered and wouldn't make working on cars fun (face it fixing cars in freezing temps is never fun for a teenager).

Are you me? this is like the story of my life here. Every gift was tools, I wanted circuit boards.

Hint to parents, get your kids into a race car.

Yea, that's cheap.

Hint to parents, get your kids into a race car.

 

Yea, that's cheap.

Get them a cheap modifiable car, that's what got me interested in working on cars. My Nissan Sentra wasn't fast but had an SR20, with a bad engine though, so when the time came to buy a new motor I just bought the stock turbo SR20DET from Japan