Club 80-90 Forums

I had to weld a small patch on the cab floor today .
With the weather so nice I was all enthusiastic and got stuck in straight away.
15 minutes or so into the welding I suddenly realised I never disconnected the battery .
I was wondering what damage have I done, if any
Van started fine afterwards and seems to be normal .

i never bother taking battery off, never had a problem, most garages dont either.dont panic
.

That's a relief , thanks for that

It's stuff like ECUs that you really need to watch out for, less of a concern with an old 1Y, although you can still cause some damage to other stuff if your earth path is quite long and the current might run through other stuff. If your earth clamp was attached right next to where you were working then this will be less of a worry.

I disconnect my batteries and alternator but this might be over kill, haven't had a problem though and it takes a couple of minutes. As above it seems like a lot of folks don't bother and with the earth clamp close to your work area you should be fine.

Forgot to put the g in the title .
The earth clamp was about a foot away so it seems I'm ok .
Thanks again for the replies

Being a runner of what the less ecologically responsible people call "Bangers", the best advice I can offer if you do disconnect the batteries is to make sure you have your radio code to hand. If you haven't then you need to rig up another source of 12 V of the correct polarity so the radio has a constant supply.

CS