Toyota Repair: 1986 Camry electrical/starting problem, fuse panel, battery cables

Question
Hi!
I'm hoping you can give me a helping hand here. Here's what's up:

1986 camry 4-cyl auto. Trying to teach my roomie how to do car maintenance, I forgot to mention "disconnect the battery". He managed to bridge from the #2 spark plug to the top wire connection on the alternator with the socket `wrench, and it had enough juice to make smoke appear from somewhere near the battery.

Since then, turning the key to "ON" only gets me the "charge battery" light on the dash. Headlights and emergency lights work, but none of the internals work (dash, radio, fans, cabin lights, etc). Turning the key gets the 2 relays in the fusebox to click, but I don't get any juice to my starter motor.

I've checked all the fuses (including the circuit breakers in the left and right side panels inside), the battery is OK, the starter is OK, and I just spent all afternoon pulling apart the entire wiring harness between the alternator, starter, battery, and fusebox, and there's no damage to the wires there at all (that I can see). The fusebox seems OK, I can't see any damage to it, or where the wires connect to the underside. I have no idea what smoked, but I'm starting to think it was either water from the battery, or crap on one of the connectors.

Anyways, I'm out of ideas as to what could be wrong. Do you have any ideas what could be causing my starter not to kick over?

Thanks very much,
Mike

Answer
I don't have much information anymore for 1986 camrys so I will have to rely on my memory, in most cases when this terminal is shorted there is either a fuse or a fusible wire that opens, toyota used fusible wire in some of the earlier models, first check to see if there is a fuse under the hood in the fuse panel that is larger than the rest of the fuses, see if it's marked alternator and it should have about an 80 amp rating,if not check the fusible wires that are connected directly to the positive battery cables, the first few inches are the fusible links which may look ok but are open on the inside, I think you will find the problem there.