QuestionGood morning... My wife and I recently purchased a 1948 Packard that is in great shape. After leaving the backup light "on" by leaving it parked in reverse, I found myself with a dead battery. No problem. I went to charge the battery and THEN learned that the Packard has a "positive" rather than a negative ground. I may have blown some fuses and tripped the circuit breaker. In any event, I find myself without any headlights. According to the manual, the headlights are on a "circuit breaker" which suggests it can be easily reset. Problem: Where IS the circuit breaker to be found? Meanwhile, I'll check the other fuses that I may have blown when trying to charge the 6 v battery (with the positive ground!)
Richard Barnes
Gary, Indiana
AnswerI'm sorry that the seller did not inform you that the car is positive ground. For your info, all Packards build before 1956 are positive ground.
The backup light should not have stayed on unless the key, or else headlights or parking lights were also on (they were wired both ways at different times during the model year), but regardless of which way your car is wired, something else was left on also.
As you've no doubt discovered, the headlight switch on these cars is tricky!. Just turning off the headlights by pushing the switch button one time leaves the parking lights on; you must push it twice before everything is off. Develop the habit of watching the ammeter when you shut off the lights to make sure that everything is off.
The circuit breaker is an automatic reset type, so that should not be your problem, unless it has failed and stuck open (this may be the first time it has been tripped in 58 years!), but I doubt it.
I think more likely, your dimmer switch is dirty from disuse - try stepping on the dimmer switch multiple times to clean off he contacts to see if the lights come back on.
Attaching a battery charger backwards to a dead battery should not have hurt anything in the car, but it might have ruined the battery, and it might have reversed the polarity of the generator, especially if the battery charger was run on a high charging rate setting.
Try this: Disconnect the battery cables, then charge the battery with the correct polarity to a normal full charge reading (6.5 volts or higher with the charger just removed).
Now, hook up one battery cable, and "tap" the other one on the post, watching carefully for any spark as you tap it. If there is one, something is on (glove box, trunk, backup, courtesy or other lights, radio, heater, defroster, ignition are all possibilities). By the way, the radio probably does not go off when the key is off.
This is off the subject, but you should have been warned to make sure the radio is OFF when you start the car, else you may burn up the vibrator in the radio.
Back to the troubleshooting: Find out what is on, if anything, and turn it off. The dash switches cause a lot of confusion on these cars, they have to be pushed multiple times to get back to the off position, depending on how many settings are available on each switch.
Now, with everything known to be off, start the car and watch the ammeter. If the ammeter shows charge (+) when you rev the engine, you're polarity is OK. If it shows a discharge (-) when you rev the engine, turn it off, and DISCONNECT THE BATTERY!, and post a follow up question to me and I'll lead you through correcting the polarity of the generator.
If the polarity is OK, turn on the headlight switch (one push from off) and walk around the car. If you have tail lights, your switch is probably OK, and I think your problem is the dimmer switch, if there are no headlights - do the dance on the button to see if you can resurrect them. IF there are no tail lights, or if there is no success with the dimmer switch dance, we'll have to get into the wiring a bit, so post a follow up and I'll try to help you further.
Good luck - you've got a great car. I've driven them for years - they are the best available old car to own - solid as a rock and completely reliable, when all the ills are taken care of.
Dick
