A few months ago my son scorched a piston in his '98 Ranger. Its taken a while to get everything done but the motor finally went back in today but he's hit a huge snag.

He's hooked the battery up and due to the length of time it sat the battery is dead. Attempted to hook jumper cables to it and nearly melted the sheathing off the cables before he even had a chance to try to turn it over. Checked jumper cable alignment, everything was hooked correctly.

Took that battery out of the equation and hooked jumper cables directly to the cables on the Ranger- same result. Sparks and instant cable heating.

Obviously there is something somewhere effectively 'crossing the poles' and it seems to me it would be a big wire for the amount of heat generated on the jumper cables. Where would be the most likely source of this? I feel like possibly a wire from the starter but have been assured there was only one way for the starter wires to hook up.

I've kept my distance from this whole project, call it a learning experience on why you should take care of your vehicles, but I can't afford to let this burn everything in the truck to a crisp. Any ideas on where to start looking would be greatly appreciated.