Posted by casebro on Thursday, December 26, 2002 at 7:10PM :
In Reply to: new battery polarity problem in PW...mystery posted by George on Thursday, December 26, 2002 at 2:31PM :
I did this once, hooked the charger backwards to a totally dead battery, you CAN reverse the polarity of batteries. I just left my lights on till totally dead again, charged it again- in the right direction this time. Didn't seem to do battery any harm. But I had a dickens of a time leaving my lights of, everybody driveing by honked, knocked on my door, even turned them off without consulting me- where were they when I left thwem on accidentily? I finally pulled the battery, put it in the shop with a spare headlight hot wired across it.
If you have an alternator, the diodes will be a dead short when battery is hooked up as the diodes alllow voltage to flow directly to ground. With generator or alternator, ammeter reads backwards.
Re: ammeter- what it does? It only tells whether the juice is flowing into ot out of the battery and how fast. It doesnot condition the juice in any way and probably cannot be hurt by a large drain, the wires would fry first.
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