Positive ground?

actually if the + post is really negative and the "-" post is positive, I'd say it's really reversed polarity.

Originally posted by GlueGuy The battery isn't reverse polarity, they just built the posts on the opposite sides from "regular", whatever that is. If you go through all the batteries on the store shelf, some will have + on the right, some will have the + on the left.  I don't think there is any right or wrong here; it's sort of like some cars having the gas fill door on the left side, some have it on the right. I would say it's kind of odd that someone chose to switch the polarity of the battery on an existing installation. It might be that they were out in some out of the way place, and had to use whatever someone happened to have on the shelf.

My guess is that the original issue in this thread was that someone threw on a screwed up battery just before they sold their pod.  They had a battery on which the polarity had been reversed by accident or negligence, but they hooked it so it would work.  That is they ran the "positive" terminal to the ground, and negative to the load, which would let it work for a while.  It would be a pretty crappy thing to do, and possibly dangerous.  That's one issue.

The other thing is that no one sells new reverse polarity batteries.  That would mean the post labeled + was - and the post marked - was +.  Reversing the position of the posts, so the positions of the + & - posts are reversed is fine.  That makes perfect sense.  But that's not a reversed polarity battery, it a battery with the posts reversed.  Apples and oranges.

I'd say no one chose to reverse the polarity on the battery.  From my very limited understanding, this is a freak thing that can happen.  You might be able to encourage it by completely depleting a battery and then hooking it up a charger backwards, but I'm not sure that doing that is guaranteed to cause the polarity to change.  Whether such an exercise works or not the battery is pretty much toast. Why would anyone do that on purpose?

TT