I have been having starting issues with my Z, and I was wondering what exactly the smaller wire that branches from the large negative terminal wire at the battery does. Yesterday when I was cranking the car over, the wire got very hot and started to smoke! Could this wire being shot cause my car to have power for accessories but not have spark? Also, where is this wire suposed to be grounded to? I have it screwed to the body with the weatherpack fuse holder near the coolant overflow bottle.

 

the smaller wire is a ground...same thing happened in my camaro once. don't know what the problem was, or how it started, but the wire started out just smoking...eventually it cought fire! It never gave me starting problems though...I jsut went out to autozone and bought new battery terminals and wires and everything has been fine since.

 

but is it possible that this bad ground problem would alow my accessories and starter to work and prevent me from getting spark?

 

Probably not. I believe the only ground wire that would give you problems with spark is the engine ground, which I think is the larger wire coming off of the negative terminal, but I could be mistaken.

 

that's what I would've figured, until that wire caught fire in my car. without it my car doesn't start...I get power...but it won't start. I put the new one on and everything was fine....I disconnected it and once again, no start...I dunno. May be a V6 thing...I did away with that V6 shortly after and put in a 350...

 

if your voltage gets too low the module won't work. with a poor battery to motor ground you probably don't have enough voltage left to properly power everything else up when cranking.

you will need to fix or replace your ground cable going from the battery to the motor, the big cable is mainly for the starter. its best if the motor end of the big ground cable is bolted to the engine block, although bolting it to the heads will work, the block is a better place for it. clean any paint or rust from the place where you bolt the cable at. do not bolt it to the intake or exhaust
manifolds.
put the small ground wire on the fender on its own bolt, clean the fender to bare metal were you mount the small wire at.
you will also need to check your motor to body grounds, with the big ground cable having a problem you were pulling all the current (up around 200 amps)
through the much smaller grounds. look around on the fire wall behind the motor for the motor to body grounds, or you can just add a new motor to body ground instead.
i recommend having 2 motor to body grounds as they are very important. clean the firewall to bare metal where you mount the motor to body grounds at.

on a side note, i have seen rear wheel bearings, the ring & pinon, & the slip yoke in the trans damaged from lack of good body grounds

 

hmmmm.... interesting... i guess i better fix my grounds