Not quite the whole story Jim.

Think of it this way. If you remove the neg terminal first, you remove
all possibility of completing a circuit with your wrench because if you
accidently touch the wrench to the body you are not completing a
circuit. ( As Jim pointed out, the whole car is negative except for the
leads coming off the positive terminal, almost all of which are
switched off-except clock, alarm type things).
Removing the positive first opens up the possibility of completing a
MAJOR circuit, as in a dead short between the two terminals if your
wrench should make contact with any other part of the car.  Only 12
volts but the potential of over 200 amps. Makes a big, wrench melting
spark, can cause the battery to over heat and explode, as well as the
possibility of burns and other personal injuries to say nothing of
starting a fire.

Removing the neg terminal before working on anything is always a good
idea.

On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 08:17 PM, Automatic digest processor
wrote:

> Subject: Re: Q: Battery Disconnect Sequence?
>
> It's not the sequence.
>
> On any car but old english ones, the negative is the ground, and it's
> strapped to the car frame somewhere. So you could say that everything
> on the car is "negative" that is connected to the frame by even a
> fastener. If you take the positive cable loose, it stands every chance
> of hitting one of these negative frame or body members (engine too,
> everything) and you'll get a big hot spark in the best-case scenario.
>
> Letting the negative cable hit anything but the positive terminal, and
> nothing will happen.
>
> Jim