Can replacing a battery cause serious damage to a cars engine?

first of all the battery had been replace 4 yrs ago (by me) and it had a life of only 2 yrs. It started to get harder to start but once it was jumped it would run until i had stopped the car. So i just thought it was time to replace the battery, so i went to Walmart where they would pro-rate the battery. I didnt want to ruin my nails so I let them replace it (i know big mistake). I can do some mechanical work on cars and have in the past with out doing any damage to the car…After the smoke started coming out of the car they took out the cars manual to see what they had done wrong. I didnt understand the spanish they were speaking so i didnt know what was being said about the car. I will find out today what exactly the damage is to the car and I will let everyone know…Thanks for you support

Hey everyone!!! I just got a call from the repair shop (the good one) and you guys were correct with them putting in the wrong size battery where the terminals were backwards. The mehanic (the professional called Walmart and now they are refusing to pay for the damages saying that my alternator was bad from the start…

If the battery wouldn’t hold a charge, but jump-starting it and driving it was possible, the alternator was working fine. This kind of treatment to an alternator is hard on it and can lead to failure, but all indications point to the likelihood that, if the alternator is now bad, it was killed by installing the wrong battery. They should at least pay your tow bill and other incidental repair bills, like any fuses, fusible links, etc. that no doubt had to be replaced. They should also replace your alternator, if it is now bad, since you drove the car into walmart with a battery that wouldn’t hold a charge. The only way that is possible is with a properly functioning alternator. Keep fighting, walmart usually gives in pretty easily. They always have on the half dozen or so engine replacements that have been sent my way from their oil changes gone bad…

On the contrary,Walmart has a reputation for never settling,they force you to sue. The recent death of a temp Walmart employee was settled but this is not the norm for Walmart.

As soon as you connect a battery backwards, you blow the main diodes in the alternator.
To make the problem worse, the alternator wiring is protected with fuse links (they can be hard to find) so just replacing the alternator may not give you a working charge system. At least some of the ECM circuits are protected so the damage MAY be limited to the charging system. That may not be true of accessories such as the radio and clock.

Hopefully, the smoke was confined to the charging system burning up.

They hooked the battery up backwards; they’re responsible, and oldschool is exactly right. WM will not smile and agree to anything right off the bat.

If necessary, go to the WM website and politely but firmly file a complaint with WM Corporate in Bentonville, AR.

Just an FYI, but WM does not even own the auto service centers in their stores. They’re a subcontracted operation (in spite of the WM uniforms and whatnot).
However, WM Corp. can apply some serious pressure to that department.

Here in OK about 2 years or so ago a lady left her car in the WM auto center for an oil change while she went shopping. When she returned she discovered her car was gone and no one knew where it was at.
Apparently someone went up to the counter, paid the oil change tab, the keys were handed over, and the car disappeared.

The car surfaced weeks later and the WM store also balked about covering the damages on this one also.
Pretty novel idea for car theft.

I just got a call from my mechanic regarding my car. You guys were correct when you said that it would cause a whole lot of problems. He said that the electrical wiring was burned up.