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Converting from Positive earth to Negative earth
Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 9:23 pm
by 999 ORX
Hello,
Can anyone advice me on how to convert a positive earth wiring loom system to negative earth please!?
its not actually a mini but my old mans healey 3000. fundamentally its the same i guess as a mini system, its still on a dynamo, voltage regulator etc? What do i need to do apart from the obvious of changing the battery? ie do you have to reverse the polarity of the dynamo etc? ive never done one before!
any help would be very welcomed!
cheers.
Re: Converting from Positive earth to Negative earth
Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 12:35 am
by zippypinhead
A decent write up on converting a Mini's polarity can be found here:
http://www.minimania.com/web/SCatagory/ ... ticleV.cfm
I would think the procedure would be pretty much the same on a Healey.
As an added bonus, when you touch the dynamo terminal, you'll probably get sparkies. Sparkies are cool as long as you don't make any expensive smoke...
Re: Converting from Positive earth to Negative earth
Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 10:12 am
by 999 ORX
Cheers Mr Zippypinhead (like the name)
That's just what I was looking for! So reading through that I'm assuming I'm going to have to have the rev counter sorted out? Is that something a specialist can do? Or will it work? I'm replacing the entire loom as when he bought the car 'restored' it still had the original loom in and he just had it mot'd and it failed on dip beam not working. I figured that out and traced to to a simple bullet connector being a loose fit but on further inspection I've found that the side light wiring has burn out! Well it must be only partially as it still works!? I'm found that the front part of the loom hasn't been earthed correctly so I'm guessing that's the cause!? But I'm also worried that it could have possibly melted into another wire so the fella he bought it from has kindly coughed up for a brand new loom as its a hodge podge job taking the melted wire out and and making it look original again. So I figured whilst I'm doing that I'd swop the earthing polarity as I believe positive earthed cars will rust more quickly!
Cheers
Re: Converting from Positive earth to Negative earth
Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 12:34 pm
by zippypinhead
999ORX,
Debate has been going on since they first figured out that direct current didn't really care which way the smoke went...
Here's a discussion on a forum that's even more obscure than our's:
http://jdcrawlers.com/messageboard/view ... 0b2001e76a
Some folks believe postive ground slows down corrosion and some believe the opposite.
Me? I needed to convert to negative ground to use a 123 dizzy. Wouldn't have bothered otherwise.