On Wed, 23 Dec 2015 16:23:11 -0500, Wade Garrett
wrote:

On 12/22/15 9:08 PM, wrote:
I have a farm tractor with a positive ground. I hooked a 15A battery
charger to it, and had massive sparks shooting all over the place. Yes,
I did connect the polarity correctly, with the red clip on the batt +
post and black one in the batt - post.

Because of this, I removed one of the battery cables (to the
tractor)[the negative one], and reconnected the charger. The sparks were
so intense, they melted a small hole at the top of the battery post.

In all the years I have charged auto batteries, I have never had this
happen. Even touching the clips together on the charger dont cause such
intense sparks. What the heck could cause this?
My first thought is a shorted battery, but the tractor lights work fine.
There just is not enough charge to turn the starter over fast enough to
start the engine. I would think that if the battery was 'dead shorted'
it would not operate the lights, or make the starter turn slowly.

To insure the charger is not defective, I connected it to another
battery and it's charging properly, on both the 2A and the 15A settings.

Anyone have any clue what's happening. I sure dont!!


If it's a positive ground vehicle, wouldn't the red charger clip go to
the negative black batt terminal?
No. Why would you think that?? It is the terminal that connects to
the ground that changes between pos and neg ground - on a Pos ground
vehicle, the red post goes to ground while on a neg ground vehicle the
black post goes to ground.

Quite possible when the battery was totally dead sometime some
"farmer" thought as you do, and connected the charger backwards -
thereby reverse charging the battery - and that "reflashed" the
generator to be a negative ground generator instead of positive.