something to think about when your car want crank.co worker took his race car to body shop after bending frame from wreck.apparently at some point they drove it around back to frame machine forgot to kill main power switch on car,frame machine broke so they left car on it for couple days after straightening frame went to move car realized switch was on and battery was dead.they run in grabbed a charger and charged the battery.called my co worker to come pick up his car.after work he got his truck and trailer went to shop.car would spin over but no spark.it took him two days, numerous trips to parts store,and over $600.00 in parts.he found problem two days later after running down battery and hooking his charger up correctly and his charger about burning up when he turned it on he said it was clicking and humming real loud.only good out of this body shop never chaged him for there work.
I have seen that happen in the R.V. industry more than once. A battery is completely dead and charged in reverse polarity it will charge in reverse. I see this every year when customers bring there units out of storage.
I did it once on an old tractor. Solution was to discharge it completely, MARK THE CHARGER LEADS, and recharge. Old farm equipment can sometimes be, um, quirky. Cosmo
I saw that happen when I was a mechanic in the Air Force and we had positive ground Ford pick ups and negative ground Chevrolets, To fix it turn on the headlights until the battery is completely discharged and then correctly hook up the charger and recharge it.
polarity is one of those things i just don't understand. i am hooking the electrical on my pos ground hudson right now. it just seems so strange to hook up the pos to the block and the neg to starter.
Solution is toss the battery and buy a new one. Discharging a battery that deeply in both directions will only lead to an early failure, so why waste the time. Just replace it and move on.
many years ago , i actually had a high school shop teacher tell me that charging in reverse would revitalize a battery . removes the sulfates or something?
i reversed the polarity on a battery once when i hooked up a charger in the dark, flashlights are a good thing to have sometimes. you should've seen the confused look on the parts store kids face when i tried to explain to him why he had to hook up the load test backwards to see if i killed it. it didnt hurt it, so i left it reversed, it worked for over a year after that.
its supposed to remove the "junk" (for want of a better word) from the electrolite and re-attatch it to the plates but i don't know how well it works
Had a shop in the eighties and had battery thieves would jump the back fence and take my good used ones, started taking marginal ones discharged, reversed the charge and delighted in the fact that they went through shit trying to figure out why their stolen battery smoked their shit..Ha. Other good trick is a nail from the underside of the wood bench with a rubber seal poked battery on it and charged up good, you could see the battery acid trail for a block before they would drop it and run for some water elsewhere, fun times.
I could just see a douche bag thief walking around the block thinking of the great score for his chevy citation that was traded for some dope. As his belly and junk start to burn and get wet and wondering what the fuck is going on as he is walking in the dark. still makes me smile...I hate thieves.
I had an 8 volt that someone messed up that way. Discharged it completely and got the polarity corrected but never got more than 3v charged in it again. Just get a new battery. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=457781
I did that once to an old Delco Freedom battery that was dead. It lasted another 3 years after that. I tried it a few years later on another battery and it blew the transformer diode on the charger. The battery probably wasn't completely dead.
Ever had a two stroke start and run backwards on ya? Happened to me once on a dirt bike of mine. Put it in gear, let the clutch out and backwards it went
It would be similar to chrome plating, changing the polarity there is how they remove the chrome from a piece before prepping it for new chrome.
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