What will help determine the direct or reverse polarity of the battery?

Can something as simple as installing a car battery be difficult? How else can. Not only difficulties, but also serious breakdowns, a short circuit, a fire in a car, a fire in an entire garage cooperative, a refusal by an insurance company to pay out insurance ... You can continue to scroll through this bloodthirsty scenario, but it is better to avoid such troubles. To do this, you should know a few simple rules and features, as well as surprises that a battery can prepare when installed on a car.

Forward or reverse battery polarity

Everything in this world is relative, both right and left, and plus and minus, and up and down, and capitalists and communists. He had just been a communist, when he immediately got into the Maybach and went to the financial exchange to check the price of oil per barrel. Nothing can be done, but with batteries in this regard it is easier. They are not going to take control of the entire car, just sometimes you can stumble upon a battery of the wrong polarity. And by mistake it is incorrect to install it, which can end sadly. This can happen if the owner mixed up or accidentally changed the terminals. Fortunately, there are only two options for installing a battery - correct and incorrect. Correct, this is when the plus of the battery matches the positive terminal of the car, and the minus matches the wire that goes to the body or to the body of the car.

Given the design features of cars that prevail in a particular market, battery manufacturers produce batteries with two types of polarity - direct and reverse. The design, principle of operation and even the appearance of these batteries are practically the same. There is only one difference - where there should be a positive terminal, there is a terminal with a “-” sign. These are all differences, but they can play, as we have already seen, a cruel joke. True, in most cases, it will not work to connect the battery incorrectly. The length of the wire is not enough, since the place under the battery, the installation site, are clearly fixed. Nevertheless, not forgetting that cases of emergency calls for a diagnosis of "light bulb in the mouth" have not become rarer, let's pay increased attention to the polarity of the battery.

European battery manufacturers, Americans and some Asians have the positive terminal on the right. This is if you look at the battery from the side of the sticker or label. Our batteries have the so-called straight polarity, which means that the positive terminal is on the left side. All the confusion also arises from the fact that “right” and “left” are rather arbitrary concepts. Especially if you look at the battery under the hood of the car. For example, the VAZ 2114 will have one “right”, Lanos will have another, and Renault Logan and Zhiguli will not understand at all how to approach the battery correctly. On trucks and Gazelles, where the battery capacity is above 60 A / h, the situation is exactly the same. Therefore, we propose to focus on the front side of the device, which, thank God, is one.

How to determine battery polarity

Suppose you had to buy a battery from an unknown manufacturer, without insignia or any designations. It's OK. We will get out here too, we did not get out of such bogs. Whatever the battery is and whoever releases it there, there are only two standards for terminals. Therefore, you can easily determine the difference where the battery has a positive terminal, and where it is negative.

Video tutorial on determining battery polarity

The standards are as follows:

• the positive terminal has a diameter of 19.5 mm;
• negative terminal - 17.3 mm.

There may be another option, but it is extremely rare, and even then it seems to be only on the territory of the PRC and the former USSR:

• the positive terminal can be 12.7mm in diameter;
• the "-" terminal will have a diameter of 11.1 mm.

Even the latest terminal sizes in the documentation can be referred to as TK. These letters encode the thin design of the terminals.

Well, if we are standing in the middle of the field, we don’t have a caliper to measure the diameter of the terminals, all identification marks from the battery are erased, there is no indication of either the terminals or the type of battery ... Then only folk wisdom and proximity to the roots will come in handy. More precisely, to root crops. If you take an ordinary potato, cut it in half and sprinkle it with salt, then bring out one copper wire from each of the terminals and stick it into the potato at a distance of about 5 mm from each other, then a whitish foam will immediately begin to form around the negative wire. Even if we did not take salt with us, but there are potatoes, it is still possible to determine the polarity. You just need to increase the study time to two minutes. Then a greenish oxide will form around the positive wire. So, an ordinary potato will help a motorist to identify the polarity of the battery. If there are no potatoes, then you can try to lower the wires into acidified water. Then, with a small distance between the electrode contacts, the negative wire will emit gas bubbles.

In the photo - potatoes, with which you can easily determine the polarity

Therefore, some conclusions can be drawn:

• The reverse polarity of the battery is most often found on domestic cars, it is indicated in the documents according to GOST with the number 0, the letters R, "e" or "op". If you put such a battery facing you, then the positive terminal will be on the left.
• Straight battery polarity. It is designated according to our GOSTs with the number 1, the letters L, “pp”. If you put such a battery with the label facing you, then the positive terminal will be on the right.

What should I do if I reversed the polarity when charging or installing?

Despite all the precautions and a lot of distinctive designations, there are cases of ambulance handling with light bulbs and incorrect connection of the battery. Anything happens. However, if this happened, and it could happen, most likely, when charging, you should not panic. The charging terminals do not have a fixed diameter, so it is not surprising to confuse them. If the reverse connection was short-lived, most likely nothing bad happened. The charger could have just burned out. Or it might not burn out, then it’s just worth checking its performance and continuing charging with a normal connection.

If charging “in reverse” takes a long time and the charger continues to work, the battery has a “polarity reversal”. This means that he completely lost his orientation - plus became a minus and vice versa. Also not fatal. For treatment, it is necessary to completely discharge the battery with a low power lamp. It can be taken from the size or turn signal, the main thing is that the power is small. In this state, the battery should be completely discharged, after which you can reconnect the charger, just follow the polarity. The polarity reversal procedure is not very useful for the battery.

If the battery is installed with non-observance of the poles on the car, then the simplest thing that can happen is the failure of the diode bridge on the generator, and then along the chain and so on to the electronic engine control unit. Anything can burn, but we repeat - you need to be able to install the battery incorrectly. Such a seemingly obvious thing as polarity also requires attention.

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