Paula Hyman wrote:
Thank you for your response. Would a battery installed in reverse operate perfectly fine for
months and then not work? Would it be able to be jump started?
Hi Paula,
It's not easy to reverse it. If someone puts a fully charged battery in backwards, it's likely that sparks will fly! It's likely to blow fuses, or melt wires, or kill electronics.
But the usual way this happens is a) battery runs dead, b) battery is removed and charged out of the vehicle BACKWARDS (with the + and - reversed). The battery will actually charge up backwards; but will have very little amphour capacity and very short life.
Such a battery will still work, but poorly. Instead of maybe a minute of cranking power, it can only crank an engine for a couple seconds.
Now, there are also other possible things to check as well.
1. Maybe the alternator wasn't installed correctly, and isn't working. The van may have been running on just the battery weeks. You needed to "jump start" it only when it finally ran down too far to start it.
2. The old battery might have been damaged when the alternator failed. If you're still using the old battery, it might have finally gave out.
3. If you replaced both the battery and alternator, they might have been installed correctly, but suffered from "infant mortality". Maybe 1 out of 100 new things we buy are defective or fail soon, because manufacturers often skimp on testing to save money. ("It worked for one second; that's good enough -- ship it")
4. Maybe the terminals on your jump-starter are installed backwards? This can happen with cheap stuff from China etc.
If you have a voltmeter, you can check the voltage of your battery, alternator, and jump-starter to figure out what's going on.
Good luck!
Lee Hart
--
We aren't devoting nearly enough scientific research to find a cure for
the most recent pandemic; contagious stupidity.
-- paraphrased from Bill Watterson (creator of "Calvin and Hobbes")
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Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com
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Lee Hart