Odd battery problem

Hello all, I bought a new battery for a bobber project i'm building and after a few days head scratching i think i have found the problem. I wired the bike so it would run which it did so thought all was well. When i started wiring in the charging system everything started to smoke. I followed the wiring diagram i had perfectly and have wired another bike exactly the same so couldn't understand what was happening. I pulled all the new wiring out and started with the ignition basics to make it run again. Nothing, checked it 4/5 times and still nothing. I checked the points and ran a new wire direct from them to the coil and still nothing.

Today i put my meter across the battery and realised i was getting -6.2v. Swap the wires round and it was 6.2v. It would seem the battery terminals have been marked wrong on the battery meaning negative is positive and positive is negative.

The bike ran because the coil will work wired either way but by wiring in the reg/rec i take it i must have fried the coil by shorting out the earth which is why it wont run now? I also assume i'll be looking for a new reg/rec now as well? I will be trying to see some money back from the supplier over it but now i know what happened i can still use this battery by just wiring everything in reverse.


Did that make sense to anyone or has anyone ever experienced a similar problem? Could of been a lot worse if i was fitting it on a standard bike.

Did you buy the battery from Stevens in Trowbridge ? Was in there the other day and someone was in there with exactly the same problem !

No, bought it new off ebay which now means a long drawn out prosses to get some money back.

That is crap news. Good luck in getting your money back. I have never heard of this kind of problem before. It astounds me how they could that wrong.