Can someone help? I need to drive my dart tomorrow
Mattax what would you do here?
About the same as you. Try to come up with a plan of attack. :)
First will be to see if we can get enough info to figure out why so much current was going toward the battery.
Ammeter info from before:
Did you notice the ammeter pegged before the off ramp?
When you were stopped at lights or intersections, did it go to discharge?
Second, you have a voltmeter or multimeter? How about a battery hydrometer (assuming a removable cap type battery)?
Goals here are
a) to get a sense of whether the battery is low.
b) track down shorts and/or additional poor connections.
For the shorts with an ohmeter, disconnect the battery posative and then measure resistance to ground from each exposed connection. Should be infinate resistance.
Resistance in the wires will be hard to measure with the ohmeter. But as a precaution, after reconnecting the circuit wires (lets say on one post), then measure resistance between the alternator's bat post and the Battery's positive clamp. If its measureable, then there's still a really bad connection in the circuit. Also check again for ground short. If none, then reattach to the battery.
With the battery connected, check voltage at a few locations. With nothing running, voltage should be the same everywhere. Only when power is being drawn should you be able to measure voltage drops.
