Great answers. Back in the day I had a 60 Chevy with a big truck battery that I salvaged from my friend’s service station. Another friend with an MG (positive ground) asked if I could jump start his car. I knew about the positive ground so I was careful to connect + to + and - to -. All was well until he tried to start the car, accidentally released the clutch pedal and his car jumped forward touching bumpers. The bumpers welded together and my extra heavy duty battery cables burned up.
On a lighter note, I once reversed my battery polarity and the lights cast shadows, the radio listened and the horn sucked
Lemme tell you, you take the series paralell systems with multi batteries in some trucks older KWs for example,will get you scratching your head,When you get a dead short,things get hot pretty quick-Kevin
Hey guys I love your show, but reading your comments I must take issue with the word lightening. Wrong word. It should be lightning. Just one little vowel, “e” makes a huge difference.
In the old days when radios had steel chassis, the chassis was the ground. Sometimes we ran a wire from the chassis to the earth–this was called an earth ground. We often did this through a cold water pipe. If we didn’t connect the chassis to an earth ground, we called this a “floating ground”. Was it supposed to be called a “floating earth”?
I always thought that an earth connection meant an attachment to the earth, where a ground could be relative, as in a car. The difference in potential is relative to the chassis of a car. You can clip one lead of a test lamp on the chassis of the car and touch the probe to the side of the battery that doesn’t connect to the chassis and the bulb will light. However, if you attach the clip to a stake pounded into the earth and touch the probe to the same battery terminal, there will be no power and the bulb won’t light up. However, if you then connect the battery terminal to the stake pounded in the earth and repeat the experiment, the bulb will light.
Ummmmmmm…I’ll make a deal with you. If you don’t pick on my spelling I won’t pick on the fact that you seem unaware that the guys with the show, Tom and Ray, are not posting here…“your” is totally incorrect…twice…
Yes, been there, done that! The more expensive sets had a power transformer that isolated the chassis from the power line. However, the inexpensive sets had the tube filaments in series and connected one side of the power line directly to the metal chassis. How this ever got U.L. approval is beyond me.
