Im gonna go out on a limb here and say check the starter wires make sure thy are all tight. Make sure that your battery terminals are tight on both ends.
mike,

The ex-Spokaner (thank God)

I just had it stuck on a flat bed and brought home so I can actually trouble shoot it now. I checked the battery wires. Haven't checked very much else yet.

I can tell you the fuse still blows with the key in the on position but without the car actually running.

A tip for people who encounter the same problem: Don't try and make a jumper to bypass the fuse. My car died like 2 blocks from my house so I thought I would stick a wire with spade connectors in there to get it to my garage so I could actually work on it... the bi*** caught on fire :laugh: it didn't hurt anything but it sure could have. I'd recommend NOT being a bone head like me and trying that.

That fuse runs everything electrical on the engine. Check all wiring for chafing against metal especially around (above and below) intake manifold. There is no one common cause - they are all different. PM me if you can't find it. I'll teach you a troubleshooting technique for finding shorts.

Found it! Just like last time I had the headlight fuse blow, two wires rubbed together the wrong way (different place) inside the harness and shorted out. Only this time, when I made my brilliant jumper, the smaller of the wires caught on fire. So All I had to do was remove the wire loom and right there was a big burn spot. Rewired the burned one, taped up the scorched ones after checking them all and no more short.


So for those who find this later when searching, don't use a "jumper" to bypass the fuse, even for a short time. Fires like to start. The fire I had helped me find the short but that was PURE luck, I don't think anyone would recommend doing this.


Also, an idea for people with fusable links that blow out is to pick up some spade connectors, a glass fuse holder with 16G leads ($1.50) and a box of glass fusses for whatever wattage you need (5 for ~$1.50). That way when you're testing your "fixes" you're not blowing 2-3 dollor fuses each time you turn the key