alternator smoking

[jocko165]

put a new battery on my ford 555 after trying to jump start. put on the positive cable first and as soon as I touched the negative terminal to post the alternator started smoking and fried. any ideas? worked fine last time I used it and have tried jump starting it once with no trouble but now...poof

 

[Delmer]

You're SURE you didn't mix up the cables jumping or with the battery? Not doubting you, just saying that statistically-that's what happened.

So you tried jumpstarting it with jumper cables? or a booster/charger? And it smoked from hooking up the battery AFTER you were cranking it over jumpstarting it?

The only thing I come up with is the alternator went bad, and drained the old battery, started heating up with the jumpstarting, then melted down when you hooked up the new battery?

 

[john hofer]

you went negative to positive.nice to know iam not the only one.makes a guy feel bad

 

[hookedondiesel]

If you boosted and connected the cables correctly, "negative to negative" and "positive to positive",, your old battery may have been shorted and shorted the alt or, vice vice-versa.

 

[jocko165]

Absolutely hooked the cables up correctly. When I tried to jump it the tractor wouldn't do anything. I found a bare spot in the positive cable that I'm pretty sure was contacting metal. Could that have caused it?

 

[hookedondiesel]

Yes, that would burn out an alternator and battery.

 

[Delmer]

Mystery solved.

Also, if it's a delco alternator, you may be able to buy a parts kit cheaper than a rebuilt alternator, most likely the diodes were doing the smoking. If the alternator doesn't have a tach drive or anything else unusual, then you can get a cheap rebuilt anywhere.