Project Truck
1988 Ranger
2.9L
91,000 original miles
New crate transmission
Body & interior in very good condition

My project truck has been sitting in backyard storage for a couple of years, the last time I was able to work on it I bought a new battery without noticing that the battery terminals were opposite of the old one.

At the time I was on some serious pain medication, it was early in the morning and i was not yet fully functional, the installation went normally until I hooked the negative cable to the battery - it had more spark than normal and it didn't click that something was not right until after I tightened down the battery clamp.

The first indication that something was not right was smoke coming from three places, the relay pannel attatched to the left fender well, the voltage regulator on the alternator, and smoke in the cab. -well dog-

Too late the damage was done I removed the battery cable as fast as I could manage, my hands don't work as well as they should and I took an inital survey of the damage.

Taking note of where the smoke came from I first looked in the cab since it contained the majority of combustible material, inspected the fuse pannel and the radio fuse was popped (big surprise), next took a look at the other two areas smoke had come from, the voltage regulator on the back of the alternator was scorched, and relay pannel did not appear to be damaged.

I first replaced the fuse for the radio/cab lights and it immedeatly popped - dead short somewhere.
Took the pannel off the dash and extracted the stereo, took it apart and the circuit board was fried.

Removed the alternator for a closer inspection, bought a new voltage regulator, installed the alternator and started the truck.

Everything seemed fine for about 20 seconds then the alternator started to smoke again, same drill - run to unhook the battery, pull the alternator.

That was two years ago, now I recovered well enough to tackle to project truck again, went out to Pick-n-Pull yesterday and lucked out, located a Duralast alternator that was not that old, installed it without mishap.

Fired the truck up - no smoke this time.
It's running again, project truck back on track

 

Glad to hear you got it back on track and didnt come across more problems than you did. Also when alternators sit for years they begin to corrode inside and when you start the truck and it tries to send power it just shorts out so it possibly had nothing to do with battery being hooked up backwards.

 

The cables were definitely backwards the new battery had it's posts opposite of the old battery, after the smoke started up that was the first thing that registered and of course it took forever to get the clamp off the battery post.

Even after sitting for a couple of years, the old truck started up on the first turn of the key.