<VV> What *could* be damaged by reversing the battery?

[Jim Houston]

I brought an MGB home from England in '73 that was positive ground..  I 
reversed the battery, repolarized the generator (flashed the regulator), 
installed a U.S. radio (the Brit one won't receive anything over here), 
and drove merrily on my way...  everything worked as advertised... 

Jim Houston
Brandon, FL

Tony Underwood wrote:

> At 04:42 hours 08/23/2005, Bill Elliott wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:54:04 -0700, Tony Underwood wrote:
>>
>> >At 01:41 hours 08/23/2005, LonzoVair at aol.com wrote:
>> >>Hey guys,
>> >>I just found a nice Corvair, but the idiot owner has installed the 
>> battery
>> >>positive ground... what could possibly be broken/burnt up?
>>
>>
>> With British cars (positive ground in some cases anyway) reverse 
>> hookups are the normal course of
>> events. If left for long the battery (and maybe the fuel gauge) will 
>> be dead and if it was an alternator
>> instead of a a generator it will likely be dead as well.
>>
>> I have a Mini that would have originally been positive ground that 
>> was imported without a battery, so we
>> really had no idea if it had been converted. The fuel pump works 
>> either way, the wiper motor was already
>> dead, the fuel gauge didn't work... so we hooked it up as a negative 
>> ground and just went with it. So far,
>> so good.
>
>
>
> One of my brothers (half-brother and also a nimrod) bought a '64 Vair 
> 500 coupe from the insurance man (who had Vairs and '62 V6 Buick 
> Specials) and bro had to buy a battery for it, ran it about 7 months 
> before ramming a bridge abutment with it and pretty much ruined the 
> car.    I ended up with it... still started and ran etc but the front 
> end was wiped out.    The car was pretty much parts, (had plywood 
> floors) so I began dismantling it... and noticed that the battery was 
> in backwards and had been since bro' had bought the battery 7 months 
> before.   His only complaint was that the radio never worked after he 
> put the battery in the car.    Fuse was blown.
>
> The car had run for 7 months with the battery in backwards, and it was 
> charging the battery (generators do this sort of thing) just fine the 
> whole time.   Of course, since nothing in the car was 
> polarity-specific-damageable (radio was inop) it ran just fine the 
> whole time and bro was never the wiser (and still isn't).
>
> You could get away with this in an early model...  but not anything 
> with an alternator.    However, a generator will usually repolarize 
> itself and not think twice.
>
>
> tony..   
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