I hooked up a power-supply to my 120V pack once, backwards. The arc was bright, the bang was loud, leads were vaporized.
On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Robert Bruninga via EV <[email protected]> wrote: > Sharing my mistakes so others can avoid them. > > > > Wife was outta town so I hauled over the Honda Civic DC conversion project > to the driveway. Didn’t really have time to mess with it (day job bekons > 12,14, 16 hrs a day and all that). > > > > So I plugged in the charger (hasn’t been plugged in in 6 months). Was > gonna keep an eye on it and forgot. Got to work, remembered, and 2 hours > lateer got home to a melted extension cord. (At least now I will be more > tolerant when the wife insists on going back home because she may have > forgotten the iron). > > > > So then I switched to a conventional charger to top off the 12v accessory > battery. It was completely dead. > > > > Came home (again around 10PM) and all looked ok. Battery was fully > charged. > > > > This morning (realizing wife is coming home tomorrow), its time to move the > bucket of bolts back to its hiding place (which is up hill)… Turned it on > and the only thing that worked was the Windshield Wipers (going backwards)… > and lights. Hummh… > > > > Darned if I did not charge the 12v battry BACKWARDS. Why did I do that? > Well, the battery has a big round RED dot sticker (to show the date of > purchase) and it is stuck on the battery right next to the negative > terminal. > > > > And now you know the rest of the story… well, except that the controller > and everything else electronic in the car is probably shot. And we wont > know till later tonight how I get the 3000 lb car up the hill to its hiding > place… > > > > Don’t do this at home… > > > > But you ask, “But modern battery chargers will not charge a dead or > reversed battery”… No, so I paralleled it with a jump-start battery to get > it started… (Lead Acid batteries have the same LEAD on both the positive > and negative terminals. The polarity is deermined by how you charge it!) > > > > The windshield wipers comment was a trick question just to see if you were > paying attention. > > Bob > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150706/d41aecd2/attachment.htm > > > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > > -- www.electric-lemon.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150706/2f347da4/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
