Sitting on the side of 485 with a dead battery... - Page 3 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

babymog · #31 10-13-2015, 10:54 AM

Many old Lucas issues were due to the lack of proper preparation for a long trip across the ocean in salt-air, these days all of these old cars have been repaired, rebuilt, restored, or at least had the connectors cleaned, ... and aren't driven in the rain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwnate1

One of my favorite daily drivers is an old British car , the LUCAS stuff on it is mostly 50 + years old and works fine , like our beloved older Mercedes , it's all dead simple and can usually be repaired easily .

99 % of all LUCAS failures can be directly traced to ZERO quality control when the part was made way back when .

I even still run a 19 Ampere generator on this rig , no hassles , just new brushes every 50,000 +/- miles .

leathermang · #32 10-13-2015, 11:09 AM

I think the Lucas problem... derives from the Norse God personality from which the name descends ( pun intended ) ... Loki
Loki - Norse Mythology for Smart People

I think Nature itself demands that Ground be Negative... but Lucas chose to use Positive for ' Ground'... an unnatural situation to start with. Everything went downhill from there...

babymog · #33 10-13-2015, 01:01 PM

"Ground" is negative,
"Earth" is positive.

leathermang · #34 10-13-2015, 02:18 PM

A car frame should not be ' positive'... and my Lucas cars were...

vstech · #35 10-13-2015, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by babymog

"Ground" is negative,
"Earth" is positive.

I have never heard that... I was always taught earth and ground were synonymous...

grounding conductors were earth conductors... on a car, earth/ground would be whatever the vehicle was wired for... neg ground cars like our MB's would be negative to the chassis, and positive to the loads...

dude99 · #36 10-13-2015, 05:55 PM

Quote:

I was always taught earth and ground were synonymous...

They are the same. Earth=Ground

leathermang · #37 10-13-2015, 06:14 PM

In third grade ... about 1957 I got an electronic kit... like an Erector Set or Gilbert's Chemistry set... except electronic.... to make the radio work I had to run a copper wire out the window and put a copper rod into the ground... just like homes are grounded these days.... so I always thought Ground and Earth... literally were the same...

vwnate1 · #38 10-14-2015, 08:33 AM

Greg ;

They are the same , some folks don't understand it well .

I have changed my LBC's to negative earthing for convenience .

Mxfrank · #39 10-14-2015, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwnate1

One of my favorite daily drivers is an old British car , the LUCAS stuff on it is mostly 50 + years old and works fine , like our beloved older Mercedes , it's all dead simple and can usually be repaired easily .

You may enjoy a visit to my virtual Lucas factory tour. Click on each department to see what went on:

Lucas Factory Museum

It's still under development, so excuse the construction.

leathermang · #40 10-14-2015, 10:18 AM

MxFrank, I went to that site... but the lights were off.....

jay_bob · #41 10-14-2015, 10:30 AM

Let me shed some light from my telephone days on the positive/negative ground thing.

A telephone line has approximately 48 V dc across the wires at rest.

The system is set up so that (in a very simplistic explanation) the + side of the battery gets grounded at the central office. This is brought out to the subscriber as the "tip" lead, so arranged because in the old days of cord boards, this would be the end of the plug. If that tip touched the grounded surface of the cord board, it would not spark.

The 'tip' is the green wire (old method) or white-blue (new method).

The negative terminal on the battery goes out to the customer. This ended up on the 'ring' of the plug end. Today that would be the red (or blue-white) wire.

So the result is that the two wires at the subscriber's location have nominally 48 V dc across them at rest, one wire is grounded (at the office end) and the other operates at -48 V with respect to ground.

This arrangement was selected to lessen galvanic corrosion with the copper lines.

vwnate1 · #42 10-14-2015, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mxfrank

You may enjoy a visit to my virtual Lucas factory tour. Click on each department to see what went on:

Lucas Factory Museum

It's still under development, so excuse the construction.

Interesting Greg .

Are you also interested in LBC's ? .

leathermang · #43 10-14-2015, 12:39 PM

No, I am only interested in women....
but thanks anyway....

vwnate1 · #44 10-14-2015, 01:49 PM

Me too ! .

(djio Gabacho y se fue entre la milpa....)

babymog · #45 10-14-2015, 02:59 PM

My comment was "ground" and "earth" in quotes, because the English always refer to the car chassis ground as earth, thus usually when I see the word earth in place of ground, I assume that it is an English car and likely not negative.

Yes they are the same, but the different term indicates what car and what polarity.