ot/ positive ground on neighbors car, wtf?? Options

[jsayre914]

My neighbor has a 65 austin healey, sitting in the garage for years, he sees me working on the teener every day. today he comes over and asked if i could help him change the battery in the car because it would not start. (he is older, no real tools) so i ask him if he checked the voltage first, he said no. I had 12.7 volts good. turn the key and the volts drop to 1. so i hook up a jumper box and turn the key, i hear the starter spinning but not enguaging. I am not an expert in any way, so i figure its either the starter or the solinoid.

how do i figure it out??

and the best part is the positive lead on the battery goes to ground and the negative lead goes to the solinoid wich is about 6 inches away from the starter. all my meter readings were done with the red wire touching the body and the negative touching the solinoid.

i cannot figure out how to think backwards. If i want to test the starter, the bolt is negative and the body of it is +

i really want to help the guy out, but i dont know how. If it were me i would already be ordering a starter.

what is the next step??

thanks


p.s. who the @#$#$ thought up the idea of reversing the ground, what benefit could that possibly have??

[VaccaRabite]

I don't know the layout of a Healey, but IIRC the starter is easy to get to.

You can jump it using starter cables on a known good battery to test it.

Zach