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On a positive ground 1951 Packard with Optima battery should you remove the positive ground cable when car is sitting in garage for safety? Or does it not matter?

Thanks

Doesn't really matter but I believe most feel that disconnecting the ground side is safest. If anything dropped or somehow contacted the live side terminal to the chassis, with ground disconnected nothing could complete the circuit.

I agree with Howard (as usual). Disconnecting whichever is ground is the safest approach.

Okay thanks--if the car is sitting under cover or in a garage and covered what is the risk with keeping the positive ground cable connected? Did people do this back in the day?

Probably none in that situation. What could occur is if, with the hood open, you dropped something metallic like a wrench that touched both the negative terminal and the chassis or sheet metal of the car in which case you'd have a dead short circuit. Another possibility is if the battery hold down strap or cover touched the negative terminal. Hence it's safer to disconnect the ground.

Dear Packard0:

If the car is going to sit, disconnect the battery.

You never know what might happen to all those live wires floating around. Disconnecting ground is safer because you can't short the wrench against anything.

Also, there may be carbon tracks in things like the ignition switch that will trickle away charge.

Still another is the clock. If the battery runs down, the clock starts using higher amperage.

I've known people who let cars sit with batteries connected for ages with no ill effects. Usually, the clocks didn't work. But one case comes to mind of someone we all know who had a fire start in one of his cars. After that he had me putting disconnect switches on everything he owned.

The only time I didn't recommend power disconnect was in cases where the owner would say something obnoxious like "Is there is some reason to disconnect the battery? I suppose I should take the car to somebody who can fix it." blah, blah, blah. One time I was told that anything can be fixed given enough money is thrown at the problem. My response was - "Then build a time machine."

Thanks for all the answers, I also now think it best to disconnect.