Headlight / \\

[dogma420]

I was reading on usenet a post about grounding wire kits,

here and this one guy said:

This deals with when you are starting the car, the current the starter is using...

<<

Like the eletronics guy said, if the cranking current cannot complete its circuit

through the negative cable, it will try to find any other path available

including smaller wires you may have added as a "grounding kit"

or other wires which already exist in the wiring chassis such as radio,

heater, ECU, sensors, alternator and/or regulator, etc.

This can cause severe damage to any of these components.

If you run higher amperage through a wire than the wire can handle,

it will heat up and burn off its insullation. This may cause shorting with other

wires or a fire as insulation can burn as well as other flamable items like

plastic parts and interior.

>>

In other words, with these additional harnesses on the 240z (the headlight / parking light harneses / my radio direct to battery) should we make the ground on the battery/starter more strong, even if at this point in stock setup it is in perfect condition? I know that the kits are adding to + side of current, but never the less it made me think, as strengthening my ground is pretty cheap insurance but since I'm grounding illiterate (other than making stock have perfect wires and ground points)....

The guy in his post also stated that using one of the grounding kits, once all the multiple points are on there, you don't need a ground to the body....is this right? That didn't make sense to me.....

What does everyone thing (esp. Dave) about those grounding kits and about possible damage to things like those harnesses we've added to the + side such as headlight/parking light kits and myself with the radio.....is a well done stock ground good enough? or does what this guy say make sense?

Thanks for reading my post, take care all,

[Walter Moore]

Both battery cables are supposed to go directly to the starter. (At least on the early cars.) So if you have the positive cable going to the starter solenoid and the negative cable going to one of the starter mounting bolts there should be no reason for the current to take the significantly longer paths mentioned otherwise.

However, if the negative battery cable is old, undersized, or corroded, then there could be a problem. Actually if you have a stock alternator with an external voltage regulator I would expect your first symptom of bad grounds to be trouble with the charging system. (A long story and hard to explain in a short post.)

Besides the negative battery cable there is also an auxillary ground between the alternator and the fender. So if the battery cable were to fail then there could be a current path through the frame and the undersized frame ground wire on the negative battery cable.

Those ground kits don't hurt anything, but if you are running a stock alternator, and the battery cables and factory ground wire are in good working order, they aren't likely to help anything either.

On the other hand if you have upgraded the alternator to something with 100 amps or more available, extra ground wires could well be a good thing.