Don't know what to tell ya bout your electrical fire, that sucks man. But, as far as your timing belt goes, it sounds liek you're tensioning the belt before you've got all the slack taken out.

When you put the timing belt on, you want to make sure that cylinder No. 1 is at TDC, and that both timing marks on the cam gears point where they're supposed to (I'm not sure where they point, I drive a SOHC).

Once you've got everything lined up, you want to slip the belt in place. The engine turns forward, so what you want to do is take all the slack out of the front side of the belt first. Get the belt over all the gears. Get the teeth set into the crank gear, and then pull the belt straight up toward the exhaust cam gear (don't pull forward or the crank may rotate). With the belt sitting on the crank and exhaust cam gears, pull straight back and set the teeth into the intake gear. You want to make sure that the belt has less than one tooth worth of slack. Make sense?

Then you take the slack out of the rear of the belt (side facing the firewall) by tightening the tensioner. Hope that makes sense, it's hard to explain without pictures.