What can blow the main 80amp fuse?
 

I swung by the paint shop to look at my car yesterday. Found out it had blown the main 80 amp fuse when they tried to start it the other day:vash:. They had a new fuse, but couldn't get it to start.
I started digging through stuff, but didn't get very far because the battery is completely dead. I took it home and charged it over night and am about to head to the shop again with some tools and my multimeter to see if I can figuire out what is messed up or how they blew the fuse.

I know they tried to jump it, and on some cars if you jump it in the wrong place you can blow stuff. Would it be possible to blow this fuse if they hooked up the hot side directly to the alternator, or somewhere in the engine compartment instead of in the trunk? I'm just guessing here since the average monkey would only find that in the engine bay. Doesn't look like they even tried to find the battery in the trunk.

I will be going through all the other fuses to see if anything else is blown. The easy to get to fuses all looked good yesterday. I did add some hood louvers before sending it to paint. It should be all taped up and I don't think water could have dumped directly on the alternator and screwed things up. Its a brand new alternator too (less than 4 months old).

I am going to take a small battery with me that I can hook up initially to check for shorts before I hook up the main battery and risk frying it real bad.

they probably put jumpers on the wrong sidez and blew the fuse themselves. its really hard to use you eyes and verify things before going into autopilot.

Like, they flipped the polarity?

yeah

:facepalm:

I've seen people flip the polarity while jumping cars before and besides blowing the main fuse, a whole bunch of weird ---- starts happening once they actually get the car to run (if they get that far). Granted this was on a car with more computers than a Miata.

Hopefully nothing else important got fried.

They dun fuked your car son.

They must have had the polarity flipped and fried the fuze when they tired to crank it that way. Replaced the fuse and checked for any shorts. Nothing bad and no other blown fuses. In goes the freshly charged battery and cranked just fine. Looks like everything is ok, phew!
Thanks for the help.
Now i just need to get the car back from them.