coolio. why not put your multimeater, set to ohms and check the resistance eather side of the crimp. maybe check for a short by conecting to the positive lead (disconected) to your earth lead.
Use one of these cans to put the smoke back into the cables. Lucas smoke in a can. http://www3.telus.net/bc_triumph_registry/smoke.htm I'm afraid some of you younger chaps don't know about Mr Lucas. He came around in the 1930 with British Leyland. http://mez.co.uk/lucas.html
A meter wont do it. Say the resistance is 0.2 ohm which is probably as low as you can accurately measurer with a meter (the leads resistance is in the same range) then power = IV or I2R or 100 amps ^2 *0.2 ohms = 2000 watts. That's enough to make most cables smoke.
it would be easier to check for voltage drop either side of the connection but I guess that's a concern if it smoking the second you connect up the battery. you can however check for some kind of short leaving the positive battery lead off with you meter connected to that lead and the other to an earth point.
