Broke Ford Van

This Ford Van maybe to new for you guys. Its a 1976 (Custom?) Ford Van. Neighbor knows little to nothing about Autos. Im 71 next month and don't really want to mess with it. (hey its cold outside). But he is a neighbor and did put my carpet in my house.

Problem: He had replaced the starter, New battery, more recent starter solenoid on fender. He has been driving around off and on for week now. Third stop he made couple days ago things started smoking. He said it went "click, click" and no start. He got the - cable off the battery but by then the neg- & pos+ cable outer coating had melted bad. He is lucky battery didn't explode. He replaced all those cables but of course no power to dash or fuses.
I told him it most likely took other stuff out with all that amperage. Is there a 30 amp or main fuse or anything. Does he (we) need to pull the fuse block and check the wires behind.
Thanks for any help.
Richard
Southern Oregon

My 1976 had a hard-to-diagnose bad battery cable, but it looks like you got that covered.  There might be a big fuse somewhere, but this is not the right place to ask that. I don't have my 1976 Econo anymore.

You could ask here: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum128/

Thanks for the reply. I thought all Ford Guys knew the early Fords. He has someone coming Monday to fix it for him. It just has wires going everywhere under the dash. Just extra junk hooked to the fuses.
I fix all my own stuff but don't need his stuff too. So thank you

First of all he needs to clean up all the extra wring under the hood so he knows what is what. Secondly, you said he replaced the starter and then after a few starts this is when things went bad. If the new starter locked up and he left the ignition switch in the on position this would cause the issue with the melted wire coverings. And yes new Chinese rebuilt starters go bad out of the box quite frequently. Have the starter checked and if its bad, take it back and get one from Auto Zone. Do not use O'Reillys for starters, alternators or mechanical fuel pumps. Their suppliers are not good. Trust me. I have a 1976 Econoline and I had a similar issue. Bad starter out of the box. Second one was bad also. Auto Zone has better parts vendors as far as the quality is concerned.