Old dead post so I'll recharge it with an old "short" story.
Over 35Yrs ago when I was sort of young still, Its true I was sort of young, I bought a cheap used car, like $65 cheap..lol. Oh how I miss those days...
I had driven it 2yrs by this time without problems, very good car I drove for yrs. Well' a friends car needed a jump start so I went to jump it and oh how the sparks flew trying to hook up my jumpers. I double checked jumpers, looked at +/- correct on both cars, all good here?.. yup!
I made sure all electric items lights ,radio etc. everything's off and try again, and then again but sparks flew every time I touched the bats with jumpers. Well wth is wrong with your car man?
So' I follow his cars battery cables looking for a short or possible tool lodged, maybe something shorting out is what drained it? Nope all good? I see Nothing!!
So' after blaming his car for everything I could think of, I take a look at my own cars cables. I then saw a very shocking thing. Get it, it was "shocking", just like this story man..lol
What I saw was my darn battery hooked up backwards!!" "How/What the he!! is going on here?
My cars battery positive cable was running straight to my frame/ground and my battery neg/ground cable ran right to my starter/solenoid. All factory wires I could tell.
How could this even be real, my car never failed to start even once and always charged perfectly. How could anyone even hook one up in a car backwards without sparks galore? Wow!!
I mind everyone here my being raised through the 60's and the biggest stoner in our school I may, no, I did sleep through several, no' most all of my class teachings...Just say'n..lol
Well' this day I was only drunk so at the bar later (around 10am) I actually learned when a battery is "absolutely" and "completely dead" as in "dead dead" it can be charged wrong.
Wrong meaning when a knucklehead, drunk or stoner attempts to charge the battery (out of the car) but gets his chargers +/- switched and puts the posi on the neg and neg on the posi then charges the battery? This reverses a batteries original polarity and there you go, an assbakards battery that actually works perfectly fine for yrs...lol Who knew?
Yes' I know we learned all this in school, well "you" did but stoners tend to forget all things school related and field learn it all later in life. Sometimes in a very hard way, never a good thing but rarely forgotten lessons.
The folks who charge a bat backwards surely realize it when he tries hooking it back up since they must now hook it up backwards for good or totally drain it and recharge it correctly.
I'm certain at first this makes some people scratch the buzz right out of their head wondering how/why/whats actually happened here and how stoned he really is?..lol
I sit here 34yrs clean/sober and damn proud of it fwiw...Peace