Re: Battery connection accidentally reversed.
Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:32 pm
Hi Again Roger
Hi you wrote (....duly replaced the 'cooked' brown cable........ to remind you this is the cable that runs from the fuse box and joins the main thick heavy duty cable that runs from the negative terminal on the battery and joins the starter solenoid......)
If you have an alternator I would have thought that it would be a negative earth system so did not the heavy duty cable cable run to the battery positive terminal?
As another post has said don't put a meter in series with a battery because at present you cannot be certain what the current flow may be and most DVM's won't read above 10A (maybe 20A with a higher quality unit) and if this current is exceeded it may damage the meter or at the very least blow its internal fuse.
A trick I have used when chasing shorts is to put a bulb in series with the battery live (positive) . Now when you connect up and the fault appears the worst that can happen is the bulb lights ( half of a old headlamp bulb with around a 6A current should limit the current to non destructive level) then various leads can be disconnected and then when the bulb goes out then that is the circuit to chase around for the fault.
Is the old control box the RB340 still in place? there may be some issue with this as a modern alternator may have an internal regulator. ( I have a +2S130 and while I have a Elan S4 circuit to hand I cannot be certain that the circuit I have is exactly what you have in your car.)
Hope this helps best of luck
Bob
Hi you wrote (....duly replaced the 'cooked' brown cable........ to remind you this is the cable that runs from the fuse box and joins the main thick heavy duty cable that runs from the negative terminal on the battery and joins the starter solenoid......)
If you have an alternator I would have thought that it would be a negative earth system so did not the heavy duty cable cable run to the battery positive terminal?
As another post has said don't put a meter in series with a battery because at present you cannot be certain what the current flow may be and most DVM's won't read above 10A (maybe 20A with a higher quality unit) and if this current is exceeded it may damage the meter or at the very least blow its internal fuse.
A trick I have used when chasing shorts is to put a bulb in series with the battery live (positive) . Now when you connect up and the fault appears the worst that can happen is the bulb lights ( half of a old headlamp bulb with around a 6A current should limit the current to non destructive level) then various leads can be disconnected and then when the bulb goes out then that is the circuit to chase around for the fault.
Is the old control box the RB340 still in place? there may be some issue with this as a modern alternator may have an internal regulator. ( I have a +2S130 and while I have a Elan S4 circuit to hand I cannot be certain that the circuit I have is exactly what you have in your car.)
Hope this helps best of luck
Bob