arsenal

Not to see if it has juice, to see if there is a good connection on the terminals...some older domestic cars have those silly nipple style batteries which are near on impossible to attach jumper cables to

1RM

How so though? Is that the only thing that can be damaged?

freq

How's the ratchet? Did you apologize to it?

1RM

Slight bit of damage. Lol

cosmomiller

Like Dwight said, the current is moving through the short. Current will take the path of least resistance and when you short the terminals, that is where the current will pass most readily; not through the cars circuits in mass. The only thing that might happen is the amp drop to the car's circuits may trigger the anti theft feature of the radio and the need to reenter the code. However, I think that would be unlikely as the battery can still deliver some current elsewhere even when shorted for the short time you did.

Car Analogy

+1.

Imagine your battery is a big tank of water on stilts, and your electrical system is a series of different sized soft pipes leading in groups of complex mazes from tank to ground.

In this illustration voltage is water pressure, and current is the amount of water flowing. Its easy to see that resistance is the size of all these pipes.

If you were to squeeze the tank to create sudden burst of water pressure (voltage spike), you can imagine that pressure blowing out some of the pipes (more voltage, through the same resistance, results in more current).

But what you did with the wrench is added a new, super wide and super strong pipe directly from tank to ground. A butt load of water would suddenly flow through that pipe. So much that there might not be enough water left to flow through the maze of other pipes.

No real risk of damage to the maze of pipes.

You probably took some lifespan out of your battery though. It'll be fine, just probably won't last quite as long. The sudden burst of current flow probably toasted some of its internals. It probably also doesn't have quite the capacity as it did before. If you fully charge it, then leave lights on with engine not running, it will probably die sooner than it would have before.

Neither of those is any big deal. Just drive it. You will be fine.

1RM

Thanks for all your help guys. So definitely no need to check fuses or relays?

S2KIrishman

jesus dude, its fine...youre being paranoid as hell...everything is going to be fine, relax...I thought you aussies were more laid back

1RM

Haha, just been hearing some relay noises, maybe I never noticed them but because of this I am thinking it may have just happened. So making sure lol