Classic/Antique Car Repair: 1929 Desotto generator, j c whitney, negative earth

Question
Am changing my 1929 Desotto sedan to negative earth. What has to be done to the generator ??

Thanks
Tony

Answer
I have to ask you why you would do this - positive ground was used by most of the cars in that era for a reason - it works better!  Electrons are fussy things - they like to jump gaps in one direction rather than the other - so the engineers decided to make the cars easier to start and settled on positive ground for this reason, both here and in other countries.  There were a few other folks who didn't bother about that - mostly General Motors - but the majority of cars that were well designed, which included Chrysler corp cars of course, were positive ground.

To answer your question, though, the generator has to be re-polarized - which is a really simple proceedure - just take the positive battery lead and "spark" it against the armature terminal of the generator, after you disconnect all the other wires on that terminal.  If your car still has the original generator cutout, you will have to find a replacement that will work on a negative ground system - I can't help you there - you could try J.C.Whitney.

Dick