2001 Chevy Suburban Electrical Problem

[smgunning]

I have a 2001 Suburban with 41K miles (just out of warranty.

I drove it last night and all was well. This morning I went to start it and the battery was too low to turn the truck over. It did have enough juice to turn on the dash lights.

I hooked a charger to it and tried to charge the battery. As it charged up, it made buzzing sounds out of the speakers and smoke came from under my dash near the radio.

I pulled every fuse and relay to see if I could find the short, but no luck. I finally had it towed to the dealer. The tow truck driver wanted to disconnect the battery before towing and the terminal was so brittle, it broke right off as he was unscrewing the bolt.

The dealer called me and said my fule pump relay was blown, the dimmer switch was gone, and the radio would not work. After talking a while, he said I must have connected the battery charger with reverse polarity.

That I know I didn't do. It was a brand new charger, so I verified with a voltmeter tonight that it was working correctly. Also, I tried it on another battery and it worked fine.

The dealer says all three things that went were on different parallel circuits, so it must be my fault.

Does anyone know of a cause for this? I need help before seeing him tomorrow, as I know it wasn't my fault. I'm an electrical engineer and worked on engines all my life. I can see how the dealer could come to this conclusion, but I know what I did was not wrong.

Please help.

[smgunning]

So I've been thinking about this all night. I know come to the
conclusion that the battery terminal was bad before I connected
the charger. Did I mention that when the tow operator heard
what was wrong, he wanted to disconnect the battery terminal
and when unscrewing, it broke right off.

When I first hooked the charger to it, it was drawing no current -
at least not enough to see on the meter (open). So the battery
was toast - even at that point.

Now, when I started cranking it, it was drawing current. If the
radio and fuel pump were drawing too much current, the fuses
would have blown. Still doesn't make sense to me yet, but I'm
getting closer.

(1) anyone know where I can purchase a wiring diagram for the vehicle?

(2) anyone know what would happen if I connected the battery
charger up incorrectly? I want to prove to them that I didn't.

[indy03r6]

Depending on the charger, you could either fry the battery, or nothing at all would happen. In my experience (I manage a battery shop), "most" new chargers will automatically stop if hooked up incorrectly. Look up your new charger on the web and see if it has the reverse polarity protection. If so, than you know it wasn't you. Also, if the wires were corroded bad enough to break than not only was it NOT your fault, but the constant amp draw/gain from the bad connection would definetaly cause shorts in your equipment. especially when alternator wasn't running the sysyem (just before and after running). Hope this helps a little. By the way, if you have a 2003 which I think you said, than your terminals would only be corroding if A. your alternator was overcharging causing the battery to gas which causes the acid condensation on the surrounding metals and corrodes them. Or B. The battery was bad, or cracked which was causing the same result. Neither your fault.