Re: Starting a 49 touring sedan after sitting 2 years

Posted by HH56 On 2013/4/22 22:19:17

I'll leave the engine recommendations to others since some have suggestions on things to look for before starting a dormant engine.

As far as the battery being reversed, if the car is stock there will have been no damage. The exception would be if the radio vibrator was replaced with a modern solid state unit, that needs to match the polarity and could have been damaged. You can leave it or change it back to positive ground. If it was accidental and you choose to leave it then a couple of things would also need to change long term. The ammeter will read backwards unless it's wires are swapped and the coil will be more efficient if whichever polarity is ground matches the + or - of the coil terminals.

Depending on how long it has been reversed, the worst case would be the generator might have acclimated to the reversal and would not charge when changed back. It would need to be repolarized for the positive ground again. That is a simple job of using a short piece of jumper wire to connect the BAT and ARM terminals on the regulator together for a second or two.