I'm having an electrical problem in my 1998 toyota camry le with 205,000 miles on it.
There has never been a problem before and the car always ran perfectly. Went out last saturday to start the car and noticed the driver door was cracked open just barely and no power. It had rained that night. I pulled up a vehicle to get a jump, but only hooked onto the camry and not the other vehicle when there were sparks and moved the battery terminal barely and the alarm started going off, the wiper blades were on, and the starter was turning over with no key in the ignition. I had to unhook the battery cables because once it started doing that it wouldn't stop trying to turn over and it kept sparking. Thought maybe the alarm was tripping something so I had the alarm removed and replaced the battery terminals because they had melted. Then 2 days later it seemed fine no sparks and it wasn't trying to start on its own. So, I drove 300miles in 5 hours with 3 stops and then when I pulled into my destination and was about to stop the car just turned off on its own. I put it in park and got out and there was smoke from the engine and then the car was trying to turn over again with no key in ignition and there was a lot of smoke and smell of burnt plastic from alternator/starter area. It was burning and had to pour lots of water and unhook battery to keep from starting a fire and to stop it from trying to turn over. So towed it to a mechanic, but they can't figure it out. Thought maybe it was the switch, but took switch out and its fine. Mechanic says they've never seen that before-not in 25 years of working on cars. It makes no sense. Could it be reverse polarity even though it was never jumped? The batter terminals keep melting. This new mechanic replaced the terminals again. What could this possibly be??
