Anything welding

This is a key statement, electricity flows in a circuit. There's a supply to the load and return path from the load to the source. And electrons are lazy, they'll take the easiest path, they hate working against resistance. IMO the most important thing is to put the work clamp on a clean spot close to your welding. Keep the circuit small so you don't force welding current to flow throughout the truck.

Doesn't matter which side of a circuit you remove, it's open either way relative to the battery.

The intention is to break the connection between the common grounds for the vehicle harness and the welding current to isolate the electronics. Thing is all the circuit returns are collected into common points and tied to the engine block and truck body, which are only then connected to the battery negative with a couple of cables.

Pulling the negative cable off the battery isn't really isolating the vehicle harness from the welding. Everything is still connected to the common ground even with the battery negative disconnected through the body and engine block. You've just removed the battery from the circuit, not isolated anything from ground.

You may be right that pulling the positive off the battery is more effective, since that will break the path through the battery to the supply side of the circuits which are individual circuits not tied to anything common. It's not a conventional vs. electron flow question, it's a question of how trucks harnesses are made.

 

Buying one $ 1000.00 ECM made me a believer I think it was a cheap lesson

Gotta love employees at least the whole truck was not a pile of melted metal and fiberglass

 

I've always pulled the battery negative figuring it's better safe than sorry. But just because we've avoided damage doesn't mean it's actually effective.

It seems there's a path through the engine/body ground that forces current into the loads but pulling the battery negative does break the path to the power side, so the circuit isn't closed. Ground currents circulating aren't going to leave the ground unless you give them a place to go, so they'll raise the ground potential but so what? You can float the vehicle harness all day without damaging anything since the relative voltage only becomes absolute when you give a reference.

It's the classic bird on a power line. Relative to Earth that power line has 220V or 440V or 500kV whatever potential it is. But since the bird is isolated from ground it experiences zero volts. When you drop your ladder on it then you'll see the voltage because the circuit has an Earth reference.

What I'm not sure is if it's better to disconnect the battery positive, which would let the welding noise circulate in the battery and completely isolate the loads rather than letting those currents circulate in the loads through the common ground into the battery through the positive but never complete since you've disconnected the negative. Interesting, in a theoretical sorta way.

 

all im saying is if your going to disconnect the ground you might as well disconnect the postive. that completely isolates everything from either end.

 

That would be the belt and suspenders safest thing to do.

 

I disconnect the neg cable from the battery when I weld on my pickup with a 22r WTF

 

And your Kenwood in-dash 8 track radio thanks you for it. ;-)

 

Dude, come on, it plays CDs

 

Just in case you're unfamiliar with the terminology @la0d0g, 45s aren't "compact" just because they're 7" and only have one song per side.



These really were a thing, BTW. I had a 1956 Plymouth Belvedere and there was an option that year for Hiway Hi-Fi that was actually an in-dash record player. Mine didn't have it, unfortunately.

 

Ha, that is good stuff!

 

My current truck does

 

I always wanted to use this...

 

If it was not for my 8 track player I would not have anything on.

 

Me too

 

To keep things more on topic I added a used (vintage?) 14" Milwaukee chopsaw to my garage shop. Trying to cut shit with a 4" angle grinder wasn't doing it for me.

 

As long as your happy I would use a grinder over a chop saw any time

 

@Wyoming09 you like the band saws?

 

In my educated opinion, a band saw is the most useful metal cutting tool.


I can answer for Wyoming09, he will take a band saw way before a chop saw.

 

So would I, but they're out of my price range. This'll do the job just fine after I clean it up a bit.