Super dumb question re: battery charging (for a friend)

[Tidybuoy]

Ok, I have a super dumb question about battery charging.

This is for a friend of mine that has no business working on cars - no offense to any of the girls on the board but this girl needs to find a mechanic.

This is for the same girl that filled up the power steering fluid reservoir with water a few months ago.

This morning, I get a call from my friend asking me if the red & black clamps on the battery charger mean anything. Of course I told her that the red was for positive and the black for negative.

She asks me if I'm positive (no pun intended) and I tell her that I'm certain. Then she tells me that she and her husband were arguing because she had charged the battery overnight but did not even question the black/red clamps and just hooked the charger up. As it turns out, she got it backwards.

So, I'm wondering what kind of damage could have been done. My initial thought is "ruined battery" but then I was thinking maybe that just "uncharged" the battery and all will be ok if done correctly? Does anybody know.

Thanks in advance....


p.s. I'm sure I will have another funny story for you all in the near future.

[surfdog4]

depending on the charger, it should have sensed the current flow when it tried to step up the voltage and shut itself off...she could check for ~12V now and if it's got that, it didn't fry the cells

[zedsn]

If she turned the ignition on I bet she fried the DME.

[looneybin]

is her husband so stupid he couldn't check that the charger was hooked up correct?

[TibetanT]

My best guess is: Bad news if the cables were never removed from the battery terminals.

In other words, I do hope that the cables (positive/negative car electrical wiring)were removed from the battery before the charger was hooked up to the posts.

Basically this procedure reversed the polarity of the electrical circuits. If the DME/ECU is okay that would be a good news. Probably would not hurt the diodes within the system, but the capacitors and resistors may have taken a hit.

Good luck.

[Aufgeladen944]

Most chargers will shut themselves off. It's a pretty common mistake.

I deal with people like this all the time. If you don't know something about cars, that's okay. But you should also know when you don't know, and have someone else do it, otherwise you're bound to break something else.

Tell her to go buy a Honda before she does more damage.

[fmartenies]

A good charger would have done nothing, a bad charger would have more likely broke itself or boiled the battery over. Chargers trickle out very low voltage so I doubt anything past the battery could be fried. Put a jump pack on there and find out.