Which cable do you pull off the battery to "be safe"? And most importantly, why? Does it matter what the repair is? or the vehicle model?

I've seen procedures that say pull the positive (ie, when replacing starter) but most of the time, it's pull the negative or ground cable....

 

i usually pull negitive.... too many things (aux fuse box, amps ect) hooked to the positive.

EDIT* welcome to the board btw... your rig sounds like mine when i got it... 94 5sp 148K... crazyness

 

you pull the negative because nothing in the car can function with out it, as its ground..... the reason you dont pull the positive is if something is partially enrgized and the cable hits anything it could spark and a fire could result, the chances are slim, but possible... this reigns true moreso with vehicles that use airbags because msot of the airbag systems have backup batteries... and having the airbags flip out and a short happen while doing work on your car is bad, i know when im working on my car, half the time is spent inside testing whtever i jsut did......

 

ground first, ground last, thats the correct order of things to do it in, meaning,

you remove the ground first, then the positive, and when rehooking, hook positive then hook ground.

wade

 

Disconnecting either cable will make the car 'safe', but the method of disconnecting is safe when you pull whichever cable goes to the chassis first. Outside of some British automobiles, this means the negative cable.

What do I mean by 'method'? Say your wrench bridges between negative and chassis while you are loosening the terminal clamp. What happens? Nothing. Now, say you're loosening the positive terminal, and your wrench bridges to chassis. Big sparks fly!

 

I've always pulled negative/ground but i've seen a number of posts here that say pull positive.... surprised no one has brought it up.... or maybe they have and I just missed the thread...

oh well, i'll continue to pull negative unless I find myself where they drive on the wrong side of the road...