bad starter funny smell

i have a 95 taurus and replaced the starter last week. the autoshop tested it and said it was bad and I bought a refurbished one. The new starter did not have clips on the wires so we had to kin-of splice and mesh them together...or something my friend repaired it and i did not see exactly what he was talking about. he knows quite a bit about cars though, and was confident. but the day after i noticed a weird smell that comes around after i start the car each time, not a fuel-like smell but something foul. and yesterday it started grinding and not starting immediately again. is it likely bad or maybe installed poorly? is there a special way to adapt the clip-less wires?

thanks for the help

Welcome to the forum!

I wonder if the smell you are noticing is an arcing smell from wires shorting out, or possibly what you are smelling is the insulation burning off wires from a high current draw. Both would likely be due to either an improper installation or a faulty rebuilt starter.

I'm not sure what you mean by the wires didn't have the correct clips on them. The wires would be part of the car, not part of the starter. If the terminals were incorrect that would suggest the starter was either not rebuilt correctly or not the correct one for your application.

-Rod

Thank you!

My friend came by and looked at it and said the wires looked fine. we started it up a few time and the smell seemed to be coming from the area around the battery. He is theorizing that it might be the battery rather than the new starter. He thinks replacing the starter may have made a problem with the battery more obvious because the starter is now fully functioning and drawing more power from the battery. So i guess we are going to go test the battery today. and if its not that we'll pull the starter and test it also.