Culmination of a bad week

[Fay]

My son had a leisure battery he does not use much, bought at Halfords, also the crocodile clips. We cut the cigarette part off & connected the wires up to the clips. To be on the safe side, I rang the chap I had bought the scope from, & asked if the white lined wire was the live & he said that he was not sure but if wired wrong all that would happen is the scope would not work. WRONG!!!!!!! The mount started to smoke! Cue for a mental breakdown!

I rang the chap again & he was surprised what had happened. He said reconnect to the cigarette part & see if the scope was still working, which it was, We redone the wire white = negative, black= positive & it worked. The chap I got it from was very good & said he would have repaired or replaced any damaged part under guarantee, which made me feel better.
Trying it out tonight, fingers & everything else crossed.
Tony be very afraid when doing yours, it could be the devils work today!!!!!!

Fay

[Rick]

Yeow! I hope nothing's fried in there...

[Tony G]

Hi Fay,
sorry to hear what happened, but glad you got it going again.
Because of this I am now disconnecting all power to the scope and I am rigging up a tread mill and will operate it with the energy from that with the wife at one end and my credit card at the other, and if I need more energy I will produce my Nectar card aswell.

Tony G

[Whitters]

That was the very same way I fried my controller for my Super Polaris mount, cost me over £100 to put it right again.
Always check that the polarity is correct, that's what I learnt. It would not have cost them too much to stick a few diodes in the circuit to prevent this type of thing happening you would have thought.

[JohnP]

Hi Fay,

That's a real pain especially after the shop (supposedly the experts) had told you the colours. I really hope that there is no further damage - at least if it lights up & the motors work that is a good sign... fingers crossed anyway. Let us know how your test go.

Cheers & good luck,  John.

[Mike]

When it comes to anything electrical, if in doubt - LEAVE IT OFF !

Let's hope the smoke was just some grease getting hot and there is no permanent damage.