"El Penguini" wrote in message

...... Surely, someone at Yamaha is smarter than me, and
said, "if El Penguini loses his mind and reverses the battery, we
should make it a $0.50 repair instead of a $500 repair."

Why should the manufacturer subsidize the foibles of amateurs? I'm sure
there are warnings and stickers all over the engine and manual to the effect
that only qualified professionals should mess with this stuff. The folks at
Yamaha, and others, know intuitively that for some mistakes, the repair
will be $500, and no amount of anticipatory design engineering will change
that.