1010 crawler electrical

[rockkkkky]

Hi All.
... Newbie Here... I've been reading the posts on this site and I am amazed at just how much info is here... Anyway... I'm a recent owner of a 1010 crawler with a model 50 backhoe and havn't used it much as of yet. I've been fixing a few leaks, waiting on the manual. It arrived a couple of days ago.
I wanted to give it a once over on the fluids and grease. In doing so, I moved it around some and dug up a small stump. This showed me the leaks. As time went on the battery got weaker and weaker. The motor started right up each time but finally the battery wouldn't turn the starter.
Now I'm looking at the manual and this puppy is a positive ground . Mine is clearly negative to the ground. Did I say it was a new battery and the previous owner put it in before he sold it. How is this possible. It has a generator not an altenator, I'm thinking I need to check all the connections .
Any insights from the people who have been around these machines? I'm not sure how it ran. Any help would be much appreciated.

[snoopy]

try putting the battery in correctly, positive ground. If it is not showing a charge, you may have a bad regulator or generator. I had a MC that someone had put the battery in wrong and the amp meter would show a discharge. look at some of the older posts also.

Good luck!

[Tigerhaze]

I have a 2010 that was originally 12V positive ground that was converted to 12V negative ground; however it also has an alternator now and not a generator.

If you are still having problems, I remember posts stating that sometimes the generator needs to be "polarized" to work right again. Basically you have to jump two of the terminals on the generator to get it to work and that it won't charge correctly until you do that. You will want to find those posts on the procedure or ask someone more knowledgeable than me.

[jdemaris]

Hi All.
Mine is clearly negative to the ground. Did I say it was a new battery and the previous owner put it in before he sold it. How is this possible.

You ought to look a little closer. It can work either way in most cases - and somebody might have changed some wiring around.

Look at the ignition coil and see which post the distributor wire (from the points) is hooked to. If it's connected to the NEG post of the coil (and battery power is hooked to the POS coil terminal) - then it's hooked up to run best with the battery hooked to negative ground. The coil will work either way, but can lose 10-20% spark-potential when used with a polarity it's not designed for. A long time ago, a simple spark intensity test was often done to identify an unmarked coil. But, in the long run, you probably won't notice the difference either way.

The crawler originally came with a voltage regulator that would only let the generator work with positive ground - but . . . many aftermarket regulators are convertible and can be made to work either way as long as the generator gets polarized.