Reverse Polarity??

[Boadie]

Ran across a little sweetie the other day driving a Jeep Cherokee don't know the year my guess would be late 80s. Well after a little trial and error in the parking lot I find that her battery is dead. So I pull the truck up to give her a jump. I got my cables ready and started looking at her battery, she has the cables reversed. I followed the leads and sure enough their on backwards. I called up my father inlaw and he said he seems to remember something about that being the case on those and it might be the way it was supposed to be. I was not going to take the chance so I pushed her car to the Checkers part store that was only 50 yards away. I watched the guy hook his cables up straight (reversed to what she had) and it started and she drove off. Im confused, any ideas?

 

[mgwerks]

There were a not-insignificant number of positive ground vehicles a few decades ago. That's one possibility. Of course, the cables could have been replaced and no attention paid to the color scheme, either.

 

[Boadie]

I traced the cables they were reversed. Not sure why she was able to start receiving jump from straight polarity. Also wanted to know if you could just reverse the polarity from the donor vehicle to jump a vehicle that is running a positive ground. Not that I will likely ever run into this again.

 

[powerboatr]

its an odd ball
maybe she had a blem battery
my old 67 vw was positive ground

but your right. i would never try to jump a vehicle that used positve ground, with a vehicle with negative ground. to many weird things could happen.
and our trucks are way to expensive to try to explain why it bunred to the ground for being a good samaritain

 

[deeretrac]

all my antique tractors are postive ground but you can still jump a postive ground vechile off by hooking postive to postive and negative to negative.

most people are scared of postive ground systems. now Powerboat i kinda agree with you too much sensitive things on our trucks.

Rob

 

[DaveBen]

Just don't let the two vehicles touch or you will have problems.

Dave

 

[JOAT]

What did the guy at checkers use to jump her? Some of the chargers and even jumper cables now are self correcting if hooked up wrong. However, I don't think any of the Cherokee's were positive ground, stock. Maybe they got a deal on a mis-labeled battery


EDIT: Did a little research, and found pretty much all American car manufacturers went to negative ground by the time alternators replaced generators (mid sixties-ish), some much earlier. Some English models had positive ground till the early seventies tho.

 

[Tbar]

Some of old tractors had positive grounds...........


Tbar

 

[Boadie]

What did the guy at checkers use to jump her?

He used one of those wheeled batttery boosters



[/QUOTE]EDIT: Did a little research, and found pretty much all American car manufacturers went to negative ground by the time alternators replaced generators (mid sixties-ish), some much earlier. Some English models had positive ground till the early seventies tho.[/QUOTE]

This is what my father inlaw was trying to regurgitate(sp) to me but he could not remember.

 

[95_stroker]

Ran across a little sweetie the other day driving a Jeep Cherokee

Maybe she was so hot your were all twitterpated and just thought the batt was positive gorund?