55 Packard 400 Earth

[pontiacdaveuk]

Advice please, My 55 Packard 400 is currently connected with negative earth, this would have originally been positive earth but has been switched by a previous owner. Everything seems to work OK with exception of the Ammeter which indicates backwards and the original radio.

I would like to put this back to stock, can anyone advise if this is a simple matter of reversing the battery leads and polarising the generator or would this affect things like the the torsion level suspension motor, windscreen wiper motor which both work OK at present or anything else...?

Pontiac Dave.

[WCraigH]

Any electric motor or light bulb on your 1955 does not care about battery polarity. Your spark coil and radio sort of care, even though they will "work" either way. Obviously your ammeter and generator do care. You can run your Packard either way so long as you have the ammeter (and spark coil) hooked up "right". You can polarize the generator to charge either way. Some voltage regulators only work with one polarity, but others will work either way. See this for part numbers:

Electrical parts Xref

As a point of reference, my 1955 Patrician was originally positive ground, but I converted it to negative ground years ago and haven't had any problems since I did the conversion which included replacing the voltage regulator with NAPA #VR325. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Twitch]

It seems the other owner did not reverse the ammeter leads if you say it is reading backwards, ie., shows negative when generator is charging. So you will not have to change them if you go back to positive ground.

[Guest AlK]

Hey Twitch:

ain't those old cereal box plaques great looking, I wish I had a ton of them.

Al K.

[Twitch]

And BOY do I wish I still had by 57 Olds 98!!!

[Guest AlK]

I almost had a deal a long time ago on a 57 olds 98 ragtop. the guy was a jerk and I almost lost all of my money. the gods were with me on that one.