today is probably the worst day ever. went to get my Z out of the garage to find it's dead. tried rolling it down the driveway to pop the clutch, no work. car is now partly in the street got my car and tried to jump it. as soon as i connected the cables, the doors on the Z automatically lock. Now i'm locked outside of the car... rush home to get spare set of keys. Put the cables back on... went to go start car. no luck. so i go outside and i smell something funny, take a closer look at the cables and i accidently reversed the polarities. took off the cables ASAP and burned my thumb and index finger in the process.

waited for the cables to cool, and tried jumping. no luck. waited for 20 mins, jumped... car was working fine. turned on the radio, no sound. went to drive it back into the garage, turned it off, shut off without turbo timer going on. cant jump it again....

SO. right now, i have no idea what i could do. i'm going to go check all the fuses in the engine bay tomorrow... the fuses in the floor kick panel seem to be fine.

what could i do? please, if you feel the need to flame, at least give me something i could seriously do about this. thanks.

this is a 300zx tt.

 

I've read one page saying it could fry your electrical system, but this other guy couldn't even start his car. It may have only fried some of the stuff in your electronics. Or hopefully just blew some fuses.

 

i did the same thing on my 97 maxima... i tried to jump it with the terminals reserved.. then when i finally switched them... some electronics worked.. others didn't..

checked all my fuses.. and nothing was blown.. just before i was about to bring it to the dealership.. i checked the fuseable link under the hood.. and found it was blown... replaced it for $3 and everything was working great again

 

Another website I just read said the guy shot is alternator doing this. Although another guy said he replaced a main fuse going to the alternator and that fixed his problem. Seems like it may just be a fuse that blew.

Did you see any sparks?

All the threads I have read so far say check your fuseable links like Doug said. You may just need to replace that.

 

I've done this to my old bimmer before... seriously, it melted the metal (+/-) connectors. Crazy stuff...

 

I've yet to do this, "knock on wood", but the one guy's post said he got a pretty good spark show, hahaha. They said if you have really good jumper cables that can hold the load it cad explode your battery!

 

the only smoke i had was from the plastic melting onto the copper of the jumper cables... thanks i'll go look at the fuses tomorrow. thanks for the quick replies!!

 

I had this happen on my 2000 celica.. fried the alternator, it started smoking!

 

so i found the culprit. there are these big fuses next to the battery. i'm not sure what kid of fuses those are... i'll take a picture and post it soon. there's a blue wire sticking out of it and its fried. anybody happen to know what i'm talking about? they're square fuses.. i think they were labeled 30A and 45A...

 

Those are the fusable links for the car. They are $25 or $30 bucks from the dealer and you have to get them from the dealer.

 

ah. thanks very much! are they as simple as pop off and pop a new one back in?

 

Yup

 

How does something like that happen?

I think if you just blew a fuse you would be lucky. I wouldn't know though, I've never tried this one before.

 

on my 300zx, i replaced the battery terminals with tsunami stainless steel terminals, and they have a tiny marking for (+) and (-). the (+) and the (-) terminals are reversed on a 300zx and a 350z. i was in a rush to jump the car because it was in the middle of the street. stupid mistake, yes.

 

....

 

I am amazed that you guys put the jumper cables on backwards in the first place. That is a silly mistake. I guess we all live and learn by our mistakes.

 

thanks doug, i checked and i confirmed i have the same problem w/ those fuses

zprincess, yes dumb mistake. the terminals on my zx arent clearly marked, just have a tiny (+) and (-). also the polarities were reversed for the 300 and 350 (i was using the 350 to jump the 300)

 

thanks again everyone!

 

Thats what the fuses are there for. I would be willing to bet you just have to replace a fuse or two.

 

I did this before and nothing happened.