Good day everyone, I am having a problem with my 88 trans am 305 TPI. The car has some sort of short in the starting system. When I tried to start, it would drain the battery and wire that grounds the negative battery cable to the body would get red hot. The starter would drag like it was bad so I replaced it. Car still doing same thing. It will start but only if the car is jumped. the main battery cable from the battery to the starter is fine. I opened up the harness and checked to see if the negative wire for the starter was touching any thing and it looks good. Also as I was cranking the last time the wire from the body to negative battery cable actually burnt up all the way. I tried to crank it again and then the positive cable started sparking a little. Checked it and the wire that runs from the possitive cable towards the firewall had gotten hot and may be the culprit It is obvious that there is a short somewhere I just can not for the life of me figure out where. The starter battery and alt are good. does anyone have the same problem? Please help, Im going out of my mind. A note is that before this problem came up, the car would run rough and sputter Never figured that one out so stopped driving car. Now trying to get car back running so I can do a mild resto. PLEASE HELP!!!!

 

It sounds like youre not grounded properly. Have you replaced the negative battery cable? You should also have one wire that goes from the negative cable to the body of the car.

 

Hey thanks a lot it was just a bad connection. I found it after i dropped the steering column, replaced the starter and opened up my wire harrness LOL. I researched the hell out of the problems that it could be and that is a good thing because I have a few of these cars. Like welding, the more I do it the better I get. I had extra money so I threw some at it.Thanks to this site I will now trouble shoot and find the problem instead of buying parts I dont need. Thanks to everyone who contributes info to this site.