Morris Minor Owners Club

I want to install a radio in my 1958 traveler. The question I have is that the car is positive ground and the AM FM CD radio is neg ground. Can that be done and how do I wire the neg ground radio?

just change to negative earth on the car.
change the battery leads over ( you may need to buy new ones)
change the coil leads over, and dynamo, you need to just touch the dynamo lead first to de polorise, and then fit permanately

It can be done BUT you have to take great care when doing so.

The entire radio chassis must be insulated form the car body, as well as any speaker connections and possibly the speakers themselves if their connections are in any way connected to their chassis. Any path to the car body could cause a short and damage to radio and electrics in the car.

Once happy that you can do this then you can wire it in as normal (with the correct polarity of course)

Really it would make better sense to convert the car to negative earth, which does not take long or require anything, or find a positive radio (no CD player tho)

Rob_Jennings wrote:It can be done BUT you have to take great care when doing so.

The entire radio chassis must be insulated form the car body, as well as any speaker connections and possibly the speakers themselves if their connections are in any way connected to their chassis. Any path to the car body could cause a short and damage to radio and electrics in the car.

Problem is that if you have a body mounted aerial ( positive earth) then that will fry when you plug it into the negative earthed radio


Paul Humphries.

true I forgot about the aerial that too needs to be isolated from the body and that would result in generally poor reception due to lack of a large earth plane

still the best way forward is to convert the car