It's possible you have the posts 1 and 2 reversed. You should never take the black-cased wire off of whichever post it goes to, it's an internal connection between the solenoid and the motor sections of the starter.

But hey it's fun to take things apart unnecessarily, put them back together wrong, then seek help.

It seems the taller post (#1) should go to the battery but I'm not, err, positive about that. I could go out and look at my car but it's dark now.

 

i see what your saying. so then the positive of my battery would be hooked to ground. which would generate a large amount of heat... i needed to take that off to change my clutch btw. but maybe they are switched. its something to check for sure...

 

well thanks MK, you were right. the terminals needed to be switched. ground should be number 2. positive should be number 1. my starter now works. i didn't really think about it before but now that i do think about it the transmission ground is at the front of the car, the fuse box is toward the back of the engine bay and that is the way the battery sits. negative in front, positive in back. so that is how the starter should be hooked up. thanks for saving me 80 bucks and a lot of pain dude. watch on here for the other 5000 problems im gonna end up with =)

 

i have a similar issue ...except the kid i bought mine from had two batteries for a stereo....and now i have a short the thermastat ground ...and the transmission ground are driving me nuts AAARGHHHHHHHH

 

Usually the best approach to one of those is to rewire everything back as stock as much as possible, then if it still doesn't work you can troubleshoot conventionally.