battery reversed - HELP!!

Sep 17, 2003 9 Replies

My teenaged son bought the wrong battery for my wife's car and hooked it up. Of course the Pos/Neg posts were reversed. Now that I have corrected it, the car will start and run OK, but most of the accessories (AC, heater blower, radio)do not work. Anyone have any helpful suggestions on where to look? Its a 99 Hyundai sonata. thanks bill



That usually fries the fuse link wires that protect the wiring harness. They will be close to the end of one of the main positive battery cables or at the main bolt on the power distribution center. Some are on the starter solenoid on some vehicles.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

BillyGoat wrote:

I would suggest you 'look' to taking the car to a dealership or an electoral shop.

mike hunt

BillyGoat wrote:

Hmmm... I've heard of the electoral college, but I wasn't aware they opened a shop. Perhaps this is the vo-tech branch?

:-)

-Jeff Deeney-

My automatic spell checker surly thinks so :)

mike hunt

Jeff Deeney wrote:

I'm curious as to why you suggest the dealership and not an independent shop? Is it because you believe the dealership to have better technical know how to fix a possible reverse polarity disaster?

-Bruce

Since I obviously meant 'electrical' shop, I did suggest both. Having said that, I do believe the dealership would be the better choice, since dealership are easily accessible and their experience would be directed more to automotive systems than the average electrical shop which does all types of electrical work and diagnostic time costs money.

mike hunt

Bruce Chang wrote:

IMHO dealerships are where you take your vehicle for warranty work. Period!! In personal experience, dealerships have factory trained generalists. They don't have specialists - except those generalists they put into "specialty areas" like brakes....

For specialty work I have had nothing but success, and fast reliable service, from auto electrical shops and from an import specialist who (unfortunately) is always booked for a week or more. As another example, for tires etc I go to a tire shop (Costco for the last couple of years). Why get tires installed at a dealership? What does the service manager really know about tires?

Yes, diagnosis costs money, but when the dealership keeps suggesting to replace parts after doing a "diagnosis" using factory supplied scanning equipment and the parts turn out to all be fine after all, well HUMBUG to the dealership idea....

Ken

snipped-for-privacy@mailcity.com wrote:

You could look in the newspaper and try to adopt another son.

Cass

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