I'm havin a major problem with my battery and it 'overcharging' is what my brother said.

Last week finally got my truck out on the freeway and it got up to 65 like I was hopin, but after a half mile it started to show it was about to die. My dad and grandpa said my positive battery cable may have rubbed against the frame for a long time now and finally shorted out. My positive cable was toast, I mean melted completely. So I went and had the battery recharged, got a new cable and put em in. When I touched the positive to the battery there was a bad spark like I've never seen on here before, and the metal connector was burned like it shouldn't be. Thought oh well, bolted it up and tried to start, rolled over once and died. Checked, the cable was hot as hell, the metal connector on the cable had melted thru the bolt(never seen that before), and it was smokin from my starter. Thats when I called my bro and he said about it sending too much power and it burned it out. Put on another cable, touched it to the battery, big spark and same burn on connector, said screw it, unbolted everything and now I'm here. Could the first short have done something to my starter, or could it be more complicated?

It sounds like you have a massive electrical short. No way should you be melting cables like that! I'd start by checking the starter and it's cables, since you saw smoke from there. If it was only a short in the postive battery cable, replacing it would have fixed the problem. The fact that you got a spark with a new cable and the cable got hot seems to incidate the short is somewhere else. Keep that battery disconnected until you find the short, you don't want your truck to go up in flames!

I had the same problem about 10 years ago but it was on my ranger. I found out that the solineiod wires were bad and one was crossing out on the frame. Yea it was very scary when you hook up the cable and it starts to melt and there is not a thing you can do without getting burned. Hope this might help some.

Art

If it toaste the battery cable to the starter I am willing to bet it also created another short at the charge lead frome the alternator.