12V Battery charging problem - MASSIVE SPARKS

Okay, I defer to your greater experience. You and bowman have convinced me.

If those 2 words were "Permanent Magnet" it would be a different story

And it likely had a transformer output stage - not a power transistor. It was an 'all tube" radio - most definitely- back in '53

Who - me, or the "painted cow"? I spent half my working life as an auto mechanic/auto electric specialist/service manager/Automotive instructor, and the other half as a computer technician - and I built and drove my own electric car back in the (late) seventies - so I know a bit about batteries.

Don't know about the "painted cow"

I didn't do it, but you can cuff me if you wish... :)

I'm the guy with this problem (OP). I worked as an electrician for years, and did electronics as a hobby for years too. But this battery thing is a new one for me. I never know it was possible, which is why I posted this, while I was still compleltely puzzled by it.

Since then, this thread and what I googled on th web, has taught me something new. But I still have to clean up the mess.... The holiday and bad weather, have kept me from doing anything except reading and determining which is the best solution. At least now I know what occurred, even if it's still sort of unbelievable.

So, I put a note under my tree, and asked Santa for a brand new tractor. That should work. :) Which reminds me, I need to go look for flying reindeer..... I can always hire them to pull my tractor... LOL....

Later!

If it was put in later, even if it had a vibrator it probably would not have had a transistor in it. There were some car radios that worked iwth 12 volts on the plates of the tubes, except they could not make very much audio power so a transistor or two were used in the audio output stage.

When I converted my 1953 Coroet to 12 volts I kept the 6 volt starter. Cranked that little Hemi like a trooper!!!

No "all solid state" radio used vibrators - and I don't know of any with solid state output (Hybrid) that used them either - and not all "vibrator" radios were polarity agnostic either - There were quite a few "vibrator" radios thay used the vibrator not only as the"inverter" but also as the "rectifier" - they were called Synchronous Rectifiers and did not require a rectifier tube or plate rectifier to make the high voltage DC required for the plates. Connect one of those to reverse polarity and the magic smoke got out quite quickly (and was not easy or cheap to get back in!!!) (and if the capacitor that tuned the transformer to "ring" at 115cps failed, the points on the vibrator would cook in a matter af a very few hours, instead of lasting for 20 or more years!!!)

philo posted for all of us...

If you did this today.... (tears rolling down cheeks) PD looking for terror cell...

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca posted for all of us...

tony911 is from the old alt.hvac crowd and used to be sensible but I think Stumped rubbed of on him.

If the battery was reverse charged wouldn't the starter be turning backwards???

shortest path to that answer is to read this thread.