Burning smell, melted fusable links

[SHOGIRL1994]

I was driving home from work last night and not even a minute after being in the car I smelled a horrible burning plastic smell. It was so bad that I was driving on the highway at 70mph with all the windows down and my eyes were still burning. I stopped and looked under the hood and didn't see anything, in fact, it seemed to smell way worse from inside the car because I didn't smell much of anything under the hood. I checked the fuse panel and didn't see anything out of the ordinary, so I drove the rest of the way home. I went to leave today and my car is COMPLETELY dead. The battery was drained (reading only .465 volts) so I went to take the battery out and stick it on the charger while I looked for the possible culprit. The fusable links on either battery cable were charred and insulation looked to be melted near the ends. I'm assuming this is the problem but am not sure what could cause it? I'm going to rebuild the wiring tomorrow and hope it doesn't happen again unless anyone else has a suggestion as to what more to look for.

 

[Ace]

usually to burn a fusible link like that you would have to have most likely a wire grounding out...replace the fusable links and check your battery cables from top to bottom and also your alternator wiring...chances are one of those things is the cause of your problem...

 

[NoSlo]

Fusible link -> can be alternator

When the alternator in my tempo ate itself and caught on fire, it also burned out a fusible link by the power panel. It's possible your alternator died and killed a fusible link, hence the no-start condition. It sounds like a short somewhere though. If no fuses inside the car or in the engine compartment are blown, the only cables left to check are those from the battery to the starter, starter to the power distribution fuse box in the engine compartment & alternator wiring.

 

[SHOZ123]

Sounds like the alternator shorted out. Do an ohm check between the output post and the alternator body, if the is <1 ohm it's toast.

Instead of fuse links get a 6 gage wire and a 150A replaceable in line fuse.

 

[SHOGIRL1994]

Cool, thanks very much for the insight!

 

[NIGHT_RIDER]

Ok So I went ahead and replaced the battery cables, alternator and starter relay. The car started after that, but Then died out as soon as I gave it a tiny bit of gas. IT did this twice. Now the car won't start at all, I have power at the battery & the starter relay, 12.7V. I have no other clue on what to do, and tara needs the car really bad. Any insight on what else it could be?

 

[NIGHT_RIDER]

Ok, nevermind. I got the car running. I ended up swapping the lRCM and it started right up and it works perfectly now. Beers for me