Dont take electrical advice from me....

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vince
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Dont take electrical advice from me....

Post by vince »

Just went outside to wire up a relay for my new horn......Hooked up the relay feed to the battery and connected up the relay....

Whilst i moved the relay around looking for a suitqable mounting point for it, i presume one of the other contacts struck an earth point...

The result? Picture the London eye firework display on new years :shock:

Now picture me moving away from under the front inner wing faster than a cheetah sprints :lol:

I laugh now but i just aged a couple of years all at once :D

I presume you never do that gauging by the smoke that billowed out from under the bonnet, i thought the battery had caught fire :shock:

No i wont be doing anymore DIY electrics...i simply don know what im doing in that area :oops:
Toby_HDi
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Post by Toby_HDi »

Oh dear :lol:

Much the same happened when I was trying to start an old Volvo with a dodgy starter once. I ended up bridging the contacts to get it started, then it decided to power up and I bridge them again (with a big screwdriver) and the ensuing display was spectacular :oops:
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Post by oscarloco »

It's amazing the ammount of power in a battery. My uncle was checking his engine when he dropped a wrench over the battery terminals. A very intense burst of light and a shower of sparks was the result plus a completely damaged (it melted one side) of the wrench.

Luckily, you didn't had a fire :)
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Post by newmezuk04 »

Me too with the zx, struggling to take the unit out to change a front ligh bulb and not switching the ignition off, sparks and lots of smoke, whoops.

Theres things I just dont understand.

Set out points for a bridge or a road using a £8k bit of equipment no problem, but things with cars I struggle with.
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CitroJim
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Post by CitroJim »

newmezuk04 wrote: Theres things I just dont understand.

Set out points for a bridge or a road using a £8k bit of equipment no problem, but things with cars I struggle with.
That's the way it is Chris. I'm happy and content with electrics but I bet I'd fail miserably to set out a bridge! Horses for courses and all that. Us who are happy with the sparky stuff are a strange breed :lol: Trouble is, electricity, for the most part, is rather invisible.

This thread reminds me of the old adge. Not so much directed at auto electrics but more on the domestic side...

"There's old eletricians and there's bold electricians but there's no old, bold electricians"

I'm of the former persuasion and after well over 30 years I still check a circuit is dead to the point of having an attack of OCD before commencing work, even on auto electrics.

The tales in this thread of dropping tools across batteries serves to illustrate that even 12V can be dangerous. It might not directly kill like mains can (it's the mils that kills and the volts that jolts as the old saying goes) but the huge currents available can cause terrible burn injuries and as a wise precaution you should never work on auto electrics wearing any sort of jewellery that might cause a short, the most dangerous being metal bracelets and watch straps. The resulting burns can be incredibly nasty.

Car batteries subjected to a heavy short can also explode, throwing sulphuric acid all over the pace. Seriously nasty stuff :twisted:
Jim

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Post by Peter.N. »

I would agree with the forgoing. Having been a TV engineer for more than 50 years I have had more than my share of electric shocks, in fact it used to be regarded as an occupational hazard. High voltage, low current shocks hurt, low voltage, high current i.e. from a car battery, don't, but they can be more destructive.

You just have top make sure that you dont make a direct connection across the battery. When you wire something, don't make a permanent connection until you are sure you dont have a 'short circuit' which means exactly what it says, you are making a connection directly across the battery instead of via whatever it was you were trying to power. Just 'dab' the live connection, if there is a large spark, don't connect it, - you've done it wrong :oops: :?
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