6v negative or postive ground??????

I just got a 1953 Ford Mainline with a straight 6 and trying to figure out from some old articles if the car is positive or negative ground. looks like in the service manual it's showing + ground. but when i got the car home and did a tune up it's been running - ground, gas gauge and flashers dont work so i was thinking if its backwards might be causing the problem. oh any ideas on how to cheaply dump the front in the weeds?

 

53 Ford was positive ground

 

How was the battery installed? If it was hooked up neg. grd.,turn the lights on and leave it overnight ... next day, hook up the ground to pos., charge it, and you should be set. Don't forget to polarize the gen/reg., which I'll leave to a 6 volt Ford person to explain ...
302

 

hey 302, why do you have to drain the battery to switch the polarity? I never heard of that.

 

If it was installed backwards, it's charged backwards. Batteries can be charged either way ...
302

 

So are you saying that if someone hooked up the battery wrong, in this case negative ground when its supposed to to be positive, that the battery would change polarity? Wouldnt this damage the battery?

 

Doesn't seem to cause any problem - saw it many times, always worked great once charged correctly ... has to be a serviceable battery to start with, of course.
302

 

It's a little known fact that if you take a car battery down to zero charge, you can reverse it's polarity and charge it backwards.

In your case, as long as theres no current flow, having it hooked up backwards for awhile wont hurt anything.

 

Every car I have had that was 6 volt was positive ground.

 

But not every 6 volt car is positive ground, nor is every 12 volt car negative ground, you must have it hooked up correctly for the system to operate correctly.

Cosmo

P.S. He's right about the charging backwards thing; I've done it with a charger that had unmarked leads.