"Important: This Vehicle is Negative Earth"

What? Where's Captain Obvious when you need him? Dude ... "Negative Earth"! Sure that doesn't ring a bell? Come on, now!

edit - as I had no clue what it was D) I googled it up ...
The procedure for changing over to negative earth is very simple. Most people do this when they want to fit a modern radio as these are polarity conscious.

1. Switch off ignition

2. Disconnect the battery and turn it round the other way. Cut two 'U' sections

from the metal bracket that retain the battery so it has adequate clearance from

the terminals.

3. Replace the two terminals on the battery leads (the positive and negative

terminals are different sizes). New ones are available from any good car shop.

4. Connect the earth connection to the battery negative terminal.

5. Disconnect both dynamo leads and use a long length of wire to connect the

small dynamo terminal to the battery positive for five to ten seconds. This removes

any magnetic memory that the dynamo has so it charges the correct way.

6. Re-connect the dynamo.

7. Connect the positive lead to the battery.

8 Swap the 2 small wires on the coil over. These just pull off and slide back on. If

in doubt you should end up with the black and white wire connected to the

terminal marked - or neg.

9 If the red light on the dash goes out when the engine is running all is well. If not

repeat sections five onwards.

10 If you have one of the very early cars with an ammeter you will need to reverse this

as well or it will read backwards. Some of the very early cars have heaters that run in

reverse as well but only the VERY early cars do this. The windscreen wiper motor also

runs the opposite way but this has never proved a problem.
Off the first site to turn up
http://www.morrisminoroc.co.uk/technicaltips/Negative_Earth.html

 

Instead of having the positive terminal of your battery providing power, you have the negative terminal providing power. So on a Negative Earth electrical system of a vehicle the positive terminal is going to be grounded to any part of your chassis, and the negative terminal is whats going to be proving power to the starter, radio, accesories, etc. The sticker is there to inform anyone of a negative earth system prior to jumping the vehicle or repairing any part of the electrical system. You hook up a jumper box/jumper cables or battery charger/tender the opposite way you normally would. So positive jumper cable goes on negative terminal, and negative jumper cable goes on positive cable. A lot of older British sports cars are negative earth, particularly the E-types come to mind. It's always nice to have that sticker present, because if you hook up any charger/jumper to the battery in a normal fashion, you're in for a face full of sparks, as well as risking damage to the electrical components. I speak from experience! That was an exceptionally clean example of a DMC-12. What a great show. I'd have to say my two favorite cars were the Red Siata Barchetta and the Aston DB4/GT Zagato. Also a really nice little line-up of Lotus race-cars.

 

From a British motorcycle guy...

Negative earth is the negative cable as ground
Positive earth is the positive cable as ground

Shiny Side Up!
Bill

 

Modern cars are all negative earth. Grounded portion of the circuit on the car is the negative.

Jumping the car? Put the negative cable on a frame or grounded portion of the car, positive cable to the + on the battery.

I think the last "positive earth" car I saw was a 60's Brit car. Drive on the wrong side of the street, ground the wrong portion of the circuit, seemed logical to me at the time.

De Loreans were built in Ireland right? in the 80's? By a guy who was arrested, but not convicted, of drug trafficing? So, it's not surprising that he felt it would be critical to point out that his car was grounded the same way as 99% of the cars in the world. Or perhaps it was a governmental regulation based on the fact that the UK might have had more postive earth cars still hanging around, and they didn't want any confusion.

DM

 

Hmm. I think this is totally backwards. Anyone taking this advice is risking fire and explosion.

 

Ok ok ok, here the truth about it.
If you turn the ignition switch too far right, it will unleash the anti-materium contained in the car (usually the mean of propulsion). As this negative mass sums up roughly to the mass of the earth, it's called negative earth.

Now one can wonder why the car still weighted in excess of 3000 lbs, but that's because De lorean used the cars to hide drugs he was trying to smuggle to the US. Hence the positive weight afterall. Still , because of poor sales, he didn't manage to flood the world wit his crappy pot.

Simple eh ?

 

Yes, it means the flux capacitor must be fully discharged before plutonium is replaced in the holding chamber.

 

You're right! I just looked at this post again today and realized I got it totally bass-ackwards. I was thinking positive earth.... You'll definitely have fire and explosion if you hook up auxiliary power to a negative earth battery in the fashion I was recommending. The Delorean is like any other modern car (negative earth). Strange they would put that sticker on the car then.