Help!!! J30 Battery Install

[driverdriver]

The battery on my J30 completely died today. Went out and bought a replacement battery and tried to install it. I've done many battery installs before but none on the J. This is my question/problem, when I installed the cables I went with positive first and then negative, however I had to abort the negative cable installation due to sparking. On my second try I did the opposite, installing positive first and then negative, however I still got some major sparking when I brought the cable over so I had to abort again.

When I took out the original battery (3 or 4 years old and completely dead) I uninstalled it by removing the negative cable first and than the positive cable.

The new battery is of the proper , size, voltage, etc.

I've checked and made sure nothng is "on" in the car.

What am I doing wrong? Help!

[DAEDALUS]

Maybe you have a short somewhere that caused the battery to die in the first place? For safety, usually you connect the ground last (at least when jumping dead batteries), but it shouldn't matter much. Maybe it's just the initial draw of the ECU/alarm/clock?

[driverdriver]

Cause of my sparking/arcing a bad alternator. According to my mechanic, the alternator stays charged even if there is no power in the battery. He had one customer recently force a cable on to the battery while it was sparking and then start the car. This guy eneded up blowing his ECU and having a small fire in hi engine compartment.

[Jeff Williams]

Good info....

Will store in memory.

Glad you got it figured out.