The ground wire usually goes from the battery - terminal to the chassis and then to the engine/trans bolt above the starter. I know your battery is relocated, so it is probably different. The main thing is that you need to have a good ground to both the engine and the chassis. The + terminal should be directly connected to the starter. You will see that the starter solenoid has two large terminals (one with a wire that goes to the starter body). You need to connect the battery to the large post that doesn't have the wire on it. How is your battery wired?



So the pop that you heard was with out the engine cranking? If so, it seems like something electrical like a blown fuse. There should be no spark if the engine is not turning. Fuel may or may not be present. Does the Haltech use a primming pulse (squirt of fuel before cranking)? Does the starter make a clicking noise or anything? Make sure the wire that energizes the solenoid (the one that you had a hard time finding) is connected and gets battery voltage when the ignition is turned to start.



Good luck.



Kent

 

[quote name='gsl-se addict' date='Apr 1 2005, 12:58 PM']The ground wire usually goes from the battery - terminal to the chassis and then to the engine/trans bolt above the starter. I know your battery is relocated, so it is probably different. The main thing is that you need to have a good ground to both the engine and the chassis. The + terminal should be directly connected to the starter. You will see that the starter solenoid has two large terminals (one with a wire that goes to the starter body). You need to connect the battery to the large post that doesn't have the wire on it. How is your battery wired?



So the pop that you heard was with out the engine cranking? If so, it seems like something electrical like a blown fuse. There should be no spark if the engine is not turning. Fuel may or may not be present. Does the Haltech use a primming pulse (squirt of fuel before cranking)? Does the starter make a clicking noise or anything? Make sure the wire that energizes the solenoid (the one that you had a hard time finding) is connected and gets battery voltage when the ignition is turned to start.



Good luck.



Kent


[/quote]



I see where the bolt by the trans was used as an engine ground before, I'll be sure to run a ground wire to that as well.



As far as the starter goes, do you think I have it wired correctly? Is there a ground wire that I would actually have to run and/or attach to the ground post on the starter?



I can't imagine how the popping + smoke was an electrical-related incident simply because the smoke came from inside the motor. Unless there's some electrical fuse/relay/component within the engine that would make smoke come up from the intake manifold, I believe it was fuel + ignition. And this occurred while attempting to crank, which kinda explains it, to me anyways.

 

I don't know if you have it wired correct because I don't know how you have it wired. Where are your grounds attached? Does the main + battery wire go to the starter solenoid? I need more information. Does the starter click or does nothing at all? I said that I thought the pop may be electrical, because I am under the impression that the starter isn't turning over the engine. Is this correct? The negative battery terminal should not be connected to the starter, unless you are talking about one of the starter mounting bolts (not to the solenoid). If it is connected to the starter mounting bolt, that should be fine. See if you have power to the starter (where the + cable connects), and power to the solenoid trigger wire when the key is turned to the start position. If you connected the ground to where it is factory (or any good place on the engine for that matter), the starter will get its ground though the block/mounting bolts.



If the engine is not cranking, it is hard to believe that the pop be from fuel/spark. If the engine is cranking, then maybe it was from fuel/spark. If it is electrical and by the intake manifold, it may be the injectors. Are they fused? They should be wired so that one side of them gets battery voltage and the other side should go to the Haltech. The Haltech grounds the one end of the injector to make the injector operate. If something was holding the injector open (like one terminal grounded and the other at battery voltage) they could have burned out. It is hard for me to tell because you said the starter was not turning over. If the engine is not spinning, the injectors/spark plugs should not fire. The injectors may fire if the Haltech uses a primming pulse, but still there should be no spark.



Give us some more info so that we can help you out. We need to know how the battery is wired, is it cranking/clicking/or nothing, and what happened when you heard the pop (did you turn the key and poped immediately, were you cranking, etc.). Try to check all your fuses and let us know more about how everything is wired and we should be able to help you get it running.



Good luck.



Kent

 

Well, without being at home and looking at the wiring I can lay it out:



-Currently, and as of last night, the starter has a wire running from the positive side of the battery to the starter and the starter is grounded within the housing itself (per the instruction sheet that came with the starter).

-The explosion was during cranking. Could it be that a wire was loose in the injector clip and therefore caused a short or something?

-The starter solenoid is connected using the stock 12a trans harness.



Let me know what you think and what I should do to keep from blowing another injector (if we determine that's what happened, I'll take a look at it as soon as I can)...it's a good thing I have 2 spares!



I'm not aware if the Haltech uses priming or not. I should have remembered to follow setzep's intructions FIRST and turn the injectors off. They are turned off now though.

 

So was the starter spinning the engine or not? You said the starter wasn't turning over but the pop you heard was during cranking. We should figure out why the starter isn't cranking the engine over first. It almost sounds like something is shorting out during cranking. You may want to unplug the injectors for now until we get the engine cranking over and get the electrical bugs worked out if there are any. This way you won't potentially damage your injectors (if something is wrong).



Kent

 

Well I did SOME work today and figured out that the reason the starter wasn't working was definitely the grounding. I grounded it to the chassis and to the bolt on the transmission bell housing and I could hear the solenoid click; however, I used too small of a wire apparently because it wasn't long and it was smoking. I didn't have any thicker wire so I'm gonna pick up some 8awg on my way home from work tomorrow.



I checked the injector that was closest to the runner the smoke was coming out of and the wiring was solid. Visually, nothing looked wrong with the injector. I did make sure they were turned off though when I tried to crank it today, so there weren't any more problems in that area.



Hopefully in the next few days I'll get it started.

 

If you have some jumper cables around, you could use those instead of buying more wire. So does that battery relocation kit use a large cable from the battery (-) terminal then splits (one connection going to the chassis and one going to the engine)? Do you know what gauge wire it is? Depening how it is connected, I would look into where it connects to the chassis and where it connects to the engine.



If the chassis ground is good, you could connect jumper cables from the chassis (maybe the strut tower) to the engine (good sized bolt or something) as a temporary solution. But it does sound like the ground is bad or possibly it is a bad starter. You could pull the starter and take it down to autozone or something and have it tested for free to rule out that possibility. But it definitely could be grounds. If the battery cables, terminals, or ground are not good you will get the clicking noise from the solenoid, but the engine won't turn over. Make sure the terminals (ground and starter (+)) are clean and make sure the connections to the battery are good. Also, make sure where you attach the grounds is not covered with paint, grease, etc.

 

the pop and smoking wasnt the throttle cable was it. If you didnt have the engine earthed the cable can turn into the earth and melt when you try and start it

 

So the battery needs to be grounded to the engine and the engine needs to be grounded to the chassis?



I tried to start it up and now I'm getting nothing, no clicks, no power when the ignition is turned on, nothing.



The battery is reading good on my dmm and so are all the wires. I checked the Haltech fuse box and the fuse box under the steering wheel and they are all good.



I can't win for losing!

 

Did you check your fusible links? Maybe the main one blew. Yes, the battery needs to be grounded to the engine and the chassis. It really doesn't matter the order. You could ground the chassis then daisy chain that connection to the engine. Or you could ground the engine then run a connection from the engine to the chassis (maybe trans bolt to strut tower or something). Just make sure it is a good connection.