IIRC I have seen pos-ground VWs. They may have been pre 1955 and it was in Oklahoma so that may be a factor.
Also, were not VW batteries sometimes in strange places?
Friend of mine had a very early one, 1949 maybe. We were also rather poor and very old was all we could afford.
You act like it’s not normal to hide the battery under the back seat.
(which turns it into a “hot seat”, literally, when the seat springs wear out and someone sits in the back and presses the seat metal down onto the battery terminals)
I was born and raised in Thunder Bay, ON. It usually hits-40 a few times every winter. Many many people have jumper cables in their vehicle and people know how to use them. I have been warned my whole life about improperly connecting battery cables but I do know how to use them, properly and safely. I have never known anyone to have a mishap. A person with a dead vehicle could go into any office, store, bank or coffee shop and say “does anyone have cables?” and several people would help, offer theirs, or might even have one of those starter machines. (When it is cold enough to need jump starts CAA could be several hours getting to you.)
Here in Vancouver if someone’s battery is dead and I offer up my jumper cables, people look at me oddly and say they will call CAA or their garage. I get lectures about how dangerous it is, and how I could screw up the electronics if I am not careful.
I don’t usually play the smug northerner laughing at the people who can’t deal with the elements but this one always makes me smile. Sorry, I will go write a letter to my Grandma in her igloo.
My kid and son-in-law hooked up jumper cables to a Cummins-powered Dodge truck. It has two batteries wired in parallel. Somehow they hooked the cables in an arrangement that simply made a dead short to the other vehicle’s battery. Melted cables ensued, and they were lucky the battery didn’t blow up.
I, too, have had a VW seat catch fire by someone shorting it with the seat springs.
My error, sorry for the confusion. Negative earth.
My 1949 Bug had negative ground & steel-draulic brakes (or mechanical brakes). This meant that the brakes were applied with steel rods. Keeping those adjusted properly was a bit of a bear, but the park brake applied all four of them. Did your friend’s Beetle have the semi-spherical turn signals that folded out from the post behind the doors? Those are cool!
Being from Oklahoma should have no bearing at all. All of the Bugs of that era were built in Germany. The ones exported to the USA were sightly different from the “standard” ones built for Europe. For example the window glass was safety glass as opposed to modified plate glass. In the mid 1960s Canada also adapted the requirement for safety glass. Another example was that the brakes were required to be hydraulically operated earlier in the US, (& Canada, IIRC), then those used in Europe.
Of course I do not know what modifications folks in Oklahoma did to their Bugs in those days. Changing a rig from negative to positive ground, (or visa versa), is doable, but why would anyone do this? It is a lot of work for no advantage.
Well, I might be thinking of something else with a positive ground.
Any of the Brit cars have positive ground back in the day?
Of course I might be in la la land too. ::: sigh :::
Yeah, lots of British cars were positive ground well into the 60’s. The advantage of positive ground is that it means that you’ve got a lot less “hot” wiring, which tends to corrode if you live on a miserable damp island and aren’t very good at making wire insulation.
As a book I have said referencing older British cars, “If Britannia rules the waves, why can’t her cars go through a mud puddle and stay running?”
Umm…
I don’t think so.
The corrosion doesn’t care which direction the electrons are flowing.
The corrosion in question is the result of an electrolysis reaction, so yeah it does.
The problem is the electrolysis reaction that forms the familiar blue and white crusties you see on the positive terminal of even modern cars. The crusties (and associated weakening of the metal) are always going to occur closer to the positive battery terminal, regardless of how the system is grounded.
On a modern negative ground car, the problem is minimal and usually limited to the positive battery terminal which is easy enough to periodically replace. But on older negative ground cars with poorly insulated wiring, the corrosion can work its way up into positive battery cable and then into the ignition and chassis wiring.
With a negative ground system, though, the corrosion will instead follow the ground strap directly to the frame of the car. Ideally, the ground strap will bear the brunt of the corrosion and can be periodically replaced, which is cheaper and easier because it (unlike the positive cable on a negative ground car) isn’t “hot” and needn’t be insulated. Even if the corrosion does work its way up past the ground strap, the car frame and body is a much larger chunk of metal than the wires so the corrosion will be less noticeable.
This should read “With a ** positive** ground system, though, the corrosion will instead follow the ground strap directly to the frame of the car.”
:smack:
I don’t buy it.
Corrosion is caused by the difference in electronegativity between two different metals at a junction. It is true that it can be enhanced or retarded by the direction the current is flowing, but in a car, all the junctions are symmetrical - copper to steel on each end.
All inverting the ground would do is to move the corrosion to the other end of the cable.
I don’t know the physics involved, but I can assure you from decades of field experience that automotive battery terminal corrosion is much more prevalent on the positive terminal, by maybe a factor of ten.
Agreed, but it was posited upthread that positive-ground cars have less wiring harness corrosion then negative-gound ones. I think that’s a load of bullpucky.
Oh look! A topic that I (regrettably) have experience with.
In my case I was jump-starting my riding lawnmower when I hooked it up to my truck. After a minute of fiddling with the connections, I realized that the lines were switched (actually, it was the smell of melting plastic that informed me).
During that moment of thickheadedness, my truck didn’t really seem bothered (it was running at the time), and the lawnmower couldn’t have cared less. After fetching my spare pair of cables, I was able to hook everything up (the proper way) and get on with mowing the lawn.
Haven’t had to change the lawnmower battery since (8 years ago), but my truck battery did die of old age (since I live where it is especially hot, batteries tend to last about 5-6 years).
So FWIW, I wouldn’t recommend it, but as far as blowing myself up I’m 0-1 in the explosion department.
if you miswire jumping and don’t destroy the cables or the battery then you might not have a good connection.