Festiva - which battery lead is which?

[riverrat321]

Hi guys. My mate has a 1.5 ford festiva. Its a 1997 - 1999 model (I cant remember which). Does anyone know which battery terminal lead is positive and which is negative?
He took the battery out to replace and the battery leads are both black and neither is marked + or -
Thanks guys.

[Adsy01]

Are they colour coded further down the lead? black is neg, black plus colour stripes will be the pos.. I guess not,

so, you should be able to follow one of the leads until it bolts to the chassis somewere, that lead is your neg.

if you can see that then the pos lead will run into some fuses, the starter motor or the altenator ect....

should be easy to trace them back :

[Yellow_Festiva]

I can now see why you asked.

My 99 is a 1.5, the + wire is made up of 2 wires, one slightly larger than the other, all black.

The - wire is a single black wire that has a yellow stripe.

Both the + and - work their way down into the 1" loom above the gearbox, the + terminal of the batt should be pointing in towards the enging bay, right next to the - terminal there should be a bank of 5 or 6 fuses.

Hope that helped

[tufLTD]

The +ive terminal is larger than the -ive terminal.

[riverrat321]

Thanks for the help guys. Thay should sort it out. I will pass it on. Thanks again.