Topic: bad ground

[jrg id]

I just learned a important lesson today about groundind your vehicle correctly. Maybe Im wrong but this just happened to me today. I just bought a 4runner 9 months ago and it looked really clean its a 87 22re. So anyways i was waiting for traffic to move and i saw my holeshot so i gunned it,as i go into this parking lot my truck dies  so i restart it not thinking about anything serious. So as i get out i notice a burning smell. So i pop the hood and see that my battery had broken out of the tray and had arced on my hood. Again i dont think anything other than i need to push it back and drive a little more carefullyuntil i get it back in correctly. Plus I am hungry and want to eat a burrito.So asd Im waiting in line this man comes running in yelling that someones truck is on fire. Smoke is everywhere so i pop my hood again only to see my power steering line is smoking like a mother. Luckily it didnt catchfire just smoked alot. It seems that when the battery hit the hood it burnt the wire from the valve cover to the firewall so the only ground left was the steel line for the power steering line to the frame becauase whoever onwned this vehicle never ground the engine block to the frame but ran the bvattery ground directly to the engine block. Sorry this is so long but i had to tell someone. 

[kneedownnate]

That really sucks.  The bad thing about buying a used vehicle, even something as dependable as a toyota, is that somebody else (or 10 people) owned it before you, and chances are one of them was a crank fiend with 5 straight days to screw things up.  I'm a little too lax about checking out vehicles before buying them, but try to check for any messed up wiring since that's my arch enemy.