So today I went to jump my friends car, and the posts on her battery were the opposite of mine, so genius me doesn't pay attention and hooks positive to negative. yay me!
... so anyway, it arced a lot as I hooked it up but I didn't think anything of it, it always sparks some. After a few seconds the ends of both cables were beginning to smoke and I finally realized my mistake. It was probably hooked up this way for 7 or 8 seconds before I disconnected it. My car was running at the time so I was worried if I turned it off it wouldn't start again, but it has twice since then with no problem. Because I have the big three installed I have a fuse on both sides of the the batt. pos. and nothing blew, so I guess my only concern would be damage to the battery itself(toyota oem). Any ideas on the effects of this mistake?
The one lucky thing in all of this was that I used my jumper cables which were originally used on large construction equipment. They are 18 feet of 4 gauge welding wire, and they take about half as long as normal cables to jump a car. If I had used my friends cables that were half that size I'm sure they would have melted.
Reversed jumper cables
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