Wrong Battery at Autozone

[LeatherVibe]

I guess this is kind of a funny story, now anyway.My mom has an '03, with the original battery. As I was replacing all her fluids last weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to replace her 6-year old battery as well. Since the Autozone is about 25 miles away in a larger town, we decided to pick up a new battery before we went out to eat that evening. I brought my mechanix gloves, 10mm wrench, and 10mm socket - all I need to replace it myself.So we buy the battery and the goober says he'll replace the battery for me if I buy some cheap battery grease. Hey, I'm thinking why not cause I'm cleaned up to go out to eat, and the grease is cheap.Goober goes and gets the new battery and rolls it out on the cart that's full of tools. I let him know he needs a 10mm so he dosen't round off any nuts or bolts with the wrong size wrench. Well he's talking 90 miles an hour and it's nothing but elbows and wrenches flying. He connects the ground, then here comes the positive wire. Horns go off, sparks fly, flashes of light - what the hell? Goober had brought out the wrong battery. It had the terminals reversed. Then Goober decided to rotate the same battery. No way Goober, I want the right battery. Off he goes to get the right one. This time, I'm pissed, and I've got my tools and I'm going to get it done slowly with no mistakes. The battery gets put in and Goober connects the ground wire first again. Well, I don't want his help anymore, and we kind of get into it about why the ground wire should be last to be connected. He didn't want to listen.The battery gets in and the engine cranks up. Good deal, the ladies and I can finally go eat. Uh - the windows don't go up. CRAP, hopefully it's just a blown fuse. There I am still in front of the store with the hood open again to find out which fuse it is. Here comes Goober.I have to give Goober credit - he found a blown fuse before I did. It was the 100 amp alternator fuse. Those who know about this fuse know I'm in deep ****, I never saw a fuse like this so I'm thinking an easy replacement. We can't pull the fuse out, so Goober gets some plyers. A good yank and snap, off comes the top of the fuse leaving two spades sticking up. I've never seen anything like that before either. Goober can't pull the spades out with his plyers, and goes back to the store to get another fuse. What he comes out with is a fuse with two huge spades sticking out of it. No way that's going to work. Hell I go back in the store to find a "female" fuse to fit over the spades sticking out of the fuse box - can't find one. Now Goober and his boss are out there looking at the new fuse and it's long spades and the fuse box that has no way of fitting the new fuse.Now I figure I'm screwed. We're 25 miles from home and there ain't going to be no battery charging while we drive without the fuse in there. That means the battery might get us most of the way home before it runs out of juice and leaves us stranded on the side of the road. Oh yeah, the Vibe has those headlights that don't turn off - double screwed.So Goober and his boss are still scratching their heads while I'm figuring out a game plan. I decide the only way to get home is to jump those spades sticking out of the fuse box until we can get the car to Toyota down the road. We found out they're closed for the 4th of July weekend, open on Monday (when I'm supposed to be back at work 300 miles away). Goober's boss finds something called a fusible link - looks like just a piece of wire. Says he'll pay for the fuse from Toyota, and gives me the one that looked like the right one. then he goes back in the store. I'm half pissed that he didn't offer any help to put the wire on, but I figure that I'll do a better job anyway. Now I'm thinking that this is a 100 amp fuse, meaning a lot of current to flow. What about heat from a poor connection of my wire? Could it melt the fuse box? Sure can if I don't get a good connection!We made it to the restaurant, wondering if we shouldn't have gone home first. Everything seemed OK, except for the keyless entry. Found out the radio didn't work after dinner. Man, is it blown or just another fuse? Is Toyota going to replace the whole fuse box? $$$$$. It's dark when we get home, so I get to spend the night figureing out what to do.Early the next morning, 4th of July, I'm out looking at the fuse box and see that the bottom has a cover that might be removed. What have I got to lose. Of course, I can't get to it easily, so out comes the battery again, along with the air filter cover, filter, and then the filter box itself. I use some bungee cords to hold all that crap out of the way while I fight with the zillion clips on the bottom fuse cover. Well sure enough I get it off and see that the fuse is BOLTED on with 2 small bolts. The fuse they gave me was the right one after all. So the moral of my story is never let the goober at Autozone or anywhere else touch "my' car again. My little bit of laziness cost me a lot of trouble.

[jake75]

Hopefully he didn't fry anything else.

[Sublimewind]

G. Ober.... (house of 1000 corpses reference...lol)Yeah, those fuses are a PITA... My GF's car used to blow them all the time.. once I got lucky and got a CarQuest manager open a store as he was just leaving for me to get one... I was 20mi from home.. He was even nice enough to let me use some tools, It WAS snowing too, so I was so very happy, I gave him 10$ for his 30min of time.. I was happy to do it too...