I just finished doing a cam swap (didn't really touch any wires) and now my ground to the firewall is smoking horribly... I have previously removed my computer and moved the battery to the trunk so I don't have the front of engine to battery ground anymore, and the ground to the frame from the battery is good (I checked.) What could cause such a problem? I thought maybe where my battery connected to the starter might be bad or touching the block so I checked that and no luck. What else might run this much current as to make the ground wire smoke? I'm open to any suggestions and if you need to know anything further let me know, it only smokes when the car is being turned over which leads me to believe it's some sort of ignition problem and really the only wires I have going to the engine are the starter, alternator exciter, and ignition hot for the coil. My car Was running good last week, now it doesn't seem to be able to even start. What do you guys think?

 

Check the alternator terminal to see if the positive ended up touching the valve cover or a bracket or something.

 

You need an engine ground because the chassis ground is not large enough.

 

Starter current has to leave the battery; travel through the starter to its case; to the block; then back to the battery. If your battery is hooked to the chassis, then you're forcing that last bit of the path up there to go through whatever connections you have between the engine and the chassis.

Either run your negative cable up to the block, or ground your block to the frame with a battery cable sized ground wire.

 

Looks like that's what I'm going to have to do then... I was doing fine without it before though which leaves me rather confused as to why this decided to go gay on me now... Time for a run to the parts store then I guess
Thanks for the help I'll let you guys know how it goes, that's the only thing that would be supplying that much current probably... Unless anyone has any other ideas.

 

From the factory, the battery is grounded directly to the engine so the starter is properly fed. The strap to the firewall is intended to ground the chassis to the battery via the engine.

Somehow, you disturbed the ground that existed from frame to engine - it doesn't really matter what that was. Don't make the electrons search for a path, give them a nice big one from frame to engine.

 

Better yet run a dedicated ground from the battery to engine block.

 

I went ahead and got the big ground wire, 1 gauge battery cable. Overkill I know but it works good. Of course my car STILL won't start because the manual fuel pump doesn't seem to be pumping. It's hooked up properly, I checked, however it just sits there and doesn't pump because it hates me I think...