Technical 1926 CHEVY, WHAT HAPPENED????

OK, so I got a 26 chevy,.. the PO hooked the battery Neg. ground.... and pretty sure it's a positive ground car...he had the cables unhooked when I picked it up..so I hooked them up positve ground.. got head lights... horn doesn't work...with key on the starter button switch on the floor does nothing... the hot cable from the battery goes dirrect there.... the hot side has power, but when you pust the button nothing happens,... and there is no power to the other side.... seems to me that you could just jump across the posts to make the starter engage and spin..... nothing... there's no fuse or breaker from battery to the starter... could it have burned up the starter when hooked up backwards???? can I take a jumper cable from the battery to the hot on the starter to make it spin??? in a sense thats what I did when I jumped across the starter button on the floor???

 

A 26 Chevy doesn't care if is pos or neg. if all is well it will start and run fine either way

 

here's the car, gonna make a hack job roadster pickup/ depot out of it...

 

Got an amp gauge? Is it showing pos or neg when you turn something on?

 

Gee, Fords were positive ground but thought Chevys were negative ground, at least the few ( not that old, more like ‘40s) I worked on. Headlights wouldn’t care either way so not a good indicator.

 

this is the car that make ford scrap the T and start building the model A... the 26 chevy had more power, easy to drive and rode smoother..

 

thanks a million for this reply... amp meter shows pos with lights on, so I switched the cables.... now the park lights started working... but no starter... switched the head lights on, head lights work.... turned the key to on tried the starter....nothing... so turned the head lights on again... nothing.... blew the 20 amp fuse....

 

why does it blow fuses on neg ground???

 

could it be that the amp gauge is hooked up wrong??????????????

 

Negative ground . Old car manual project .

 

It’s easy to swap wires around on the amp gauge, seems it’s been hooked up pos ground but should be neg to ground

 

You may have other issues, is it a replacement wiring harness or lots of loose wires everywhere?

 

the amp wire goes to the power side of the starter button.... I un hooked it and now no power anywhere... also... the amp gauge only has wire??? guess I'm throwing in the towel for today.... looked everywhere for a 1926 chevy tourer wire diagram... all i find is fords...

 

https://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/electrical/wiring/pdf/23car.pdf

 

This is a 25 Chev and should be 25/26 wiring diagram clearly showing negative ground. Blown fuses usually directly relate to a shorted out wire or what ever is fused or said item being bad but I'd bet that you have a shorted out wire and reverse polarity won't cause shorts.

 

Usually all the power for the car runs through the amp gauge. If you disconnected it, you have removed power from the rest of the car. The reason is so the gauge can give you an accurate reading on how many amps are being pulled. Anything not running through the amp gauge is a draw on the system that you will never see reflected. The starter circuit is usually not through the gauge as the huge draw could be outside of your gauge's limitations. If you want to see what the car is truly pulling for amps, take another gauge and put the positive lead from the battery on one side, and the battery positive terminal on the other. Just remember the cranking amps on cars is usually well over what the alternator is rated for so make sure the gauge can handle that many amps. Doing the two amp gauges might help you isolate the short.

 

In the second last line of the above Post I think it should read amp meter/gauge not alternator. This may confuse the original poster.

 

No, I reads correctly. Cars rarely if ever have an amp gauge that show the cranking amps, the gauge is used to monitor the health of the alternator/generator and see how much draw is taking place. As starters can draw hundreds of Amps while cranking, they are usually not in the amp gauge circuit. If you place the second gauge like I said between the battery and the positive cable, every amp being drawn will read on the gauge. With some starters pulling 400 plus cranking amps, they need to be aware of the risk involved. But finding out how much draw is going through the system when you turn on and off items will help isolate what might be shorted.

 

thanks a million...looks like it's in greek though...lol,... gonna get back after this at day light... starting to think the light ign. switch is bad and shorting out... and also starter is bad..... seems to me that hooking a jumper cable to the starter should make it spin... also,... seems that messing with the light switch might be what blows the fuse....???? All I know... sum ting wong....

 

so the question on the boaed... can I hook a jumper cable to the hot side of the starter,... and that would make it spin???? correct??? or how could I bench test it in the car????

 

only one wire post on amp gauge

 

so the quest here is have a Jacket up, jerry rigged,. gow job , hack depot/ roadster pick up with a lid on it
and want is to keep the dash looking stock....I've been 3 goat rope'ns and a dozen county fairs and i've never seen a 1 wire amp meter....

 

LOL,... had that sticker on the back window of my surf van next to the don't laugh your daughter might be in here sticker....

 

Ok, back to some basic mechanical stuff, we’ll leave the electrical for a bit.

Does the starter work? Do you know for a fact that it does? Seen it? Heard it ? Felt it turn over? Not trying to belittle you, we just need the facts mam.
If the electrical cables were disconnected when you got the car, that’s a sure sign something was not working. Was indeed someone steady cranking over the engine to start it until they ran the battery down? Ok, I understand you might not have been there when this happened, but do you get the feeling from the previous owner it could be what happened?

Now to the electrical part….a lot of starters, when subjected to very low current levels when in a high demand cycle, will stick or lock up. That last little “ommmph” on a nearly dead battery could have stuck the starter. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh hot battery hooked up and it will be hunky dorey, sometimes you can bump the starter hard with a heavy item like a BFH and jar it out of its stuck position. Other times, a complete removal and tear down will be necessary. Now you got some inspecting to do….

 

The Amp meter appears to have an inductive loop on it to sense the amperage coming through wire that bolts to the stud. 37 to 39 fords had the same type of inductive loop style amp gauge on them. the stud i would say is really just a location to pick up power on the other side of the loop there by registering all power used through the amp meter. as crazy as it sounds the direction of the wire going through the loop makes a difference. One direction will show positive on a load which is backwards if under load.

As far as the starter situation, I would recommend getting a nice full charge on the battery. While that is charging, clean all the grounds thoroughly. Once fully charged, chase the current flow, check that you have power to the starter switch when key is on, then trough the switch, then to the starter. If you have power all the way to the starter through the switch, don't be afraid to Wack the starter with a big hammer. it might just be stuck; it is from 1926. If you have power all the way through to the starter, and a couple whacks of the hammer do not get it moving, id pull the starter and start bench testing, and then get it ready to rebuild.

 

up date.... took the light/ign switch out.. took the back off... there was one of the springs floating around in there,... probley why it would short out now and then....don't know if thats the whole problem, or part.... anyone know where to buy a ign,/light switch.... this one is beyond repair....

 

your best bet will most likely be The Filling Station.

Filling Station Chevrolet & GMC Quality Reproduction Parts

 

On a DC motor, reversing the polarity will reverse the direction of the motor.
So how is the starter motor going to turn the correct direction, to make the motor
run, if the polarity isn't correct ? 2 strokes can run equally well, in both directions.
4 strokes can not.

 

Not true. On a DC motor with a fixed field, such as a permanent magnet window motor, that is true. On a DC motor with a wired field, such as the starter motor, to change direction you need to either change the polarity of the armature or the field. If you change both, such as switching from positive to negative ground, the motor still rotates in the same direction. This type of DC motor doesn't care about polarity.