So my battery died last night; I left the door open and it drained out.

 

I tried to jump it, very carefully, as I was told that one should never jump a old Subaru for risk of doing damage.

 

Jumping didn't work but what happened in the process is that I started seeing smoke coming from a little box mounted to the drivers side.

 

The little black box on the on the drivers side contains 4 fusible links; 1.25, .50, .85, and .50. The 1.25 was what caused the smoke.

 

First, is this a quick fix just replacing the link? If so, who has them?

Second, did I just damage my car?

 

Thanks guys!

So long as you jump positive to positive and ground to a ground on the body of the car or chassis, I'm pretty sure there should be no risk of damage..

who told you to never jump and old Subaru?

as long as the cables are not backwards. The FSM states that you would fry the ECu if the battery were connected backwards.

That means you have a bad electrical issue somewhere....

 

Ive seen it happen to older EA82s and my advice was to start replacing cables and battery terminals... on 2/3 fixing battery terminals worked... on the 3rd, nothing short of a new wiring harness was going to help (duct taped wires, cut wires, loose wires etc) so the car was scrapped...

 

Which was sad, like a 1989 DL with 91k on it super clean

Ever notice how these little battery terminals suck?

 

I had to replace my postive terminal, and soon will replace my negative one, just for safe measure...

 

On my sisters 91 Legacy, the previous owner monkey-fisted the cable on and it just snapped when I tried to take it off causing me to touch the wrench to the terminal... sparks flew

you can replace the fuse links with j-type fuses found in a legacy or ford.

 

with battery terminals, you can replace them with brass marine types, since the cables unbolt from the terminals. This way you can disconnect the battery with a wing nut, instead of distorting the terminals.

Yea the positive one works like that, the negative doesnt appear that it would work like that unfortunately, Ill have to look into that.

Since there wasn't a problem before you jumped the battery I suspect what caused the fusible link to blow was the jumper cables were connected in reverse of what they should have been. To see if there is a shorting problem you could check the resistance on the protected side of the fusible link connection and check for a short to ground. You could also connect a brake light bulb in series where the fusible link would normally connect. Then connect up a fully charged battery and see if the brake light glows brightly. If it does then there is a problem down the line somewhere. Pulling fuses should help locate the area of the trouble.