Chevrolet Repair: 89 chevy s10 blazer electric/battery, chevy s10 blazer, negative battery cable

Question
just replaced the starter (after a huge fiasco and a lot of $$ spent. I was doing it by myself and it's the first time i've ever really worked on a car. My blazer started up beautifully, so I took it to get gas, got around the block and my dash lights start flickering really bright on and off etc... then there is a small puff of smoke from under the hood and the truck died. when inspecting what happened, found that the negative battery cable melted/sheared off leaving the circular connector fused to the side post. go to get a new neg battery cable, replace it, make sure everything is atached and nothing is going to short it out. reattached the + cable to the battery, then the new neg cable. as soon as it makes contact, i get zapped and part of the lead connector melts. tried one more time, this time the post and connector create an arc. so i detached everything and now i'm stuck...what did i do to my blazer?

Answer
Hi Leandra,

I know this seems totally scary and you are probably kicking yourself.  But the problem is not that difficult, nor uncommon for a first time starter.

You may find that the positive battery wire, (the larger one at the starter), is touching the frame, or exhaust, or shorting out on something.  

The problem you have is a direct short.  This is causing a direct ground condition which is overwhelming your battery.  You can feel lucky that the battery didn't blow up.  This would have been a mess.

This diagnosis is based on the fact that you said the truck started beautifully.  This tells me the termials are not crossed at the battery.  You don't talk of a sound from underneith the truck which rules out running on starter.  This is when the starter is stuck in the start position.  
If you put the small wire on the wrong terminal, you would have a no start.  

Don't be discouraged, it sounds like you did good installing the starter.  30% of the time a mechanic will make this same mistake.  But usually they catch it ahead of melting the battery leads.  I give you lots of respect for doing this yourself.

If I am wrong, write back.

C J S