Grounding mod question

[warrior]

I've seen some mods where the installer runs each ground wire to the neg(-) battery terminal and others that daisy chain each connection until it wraps around the pass. side of the engine.

Does either method have any pros/cons or do they function the same and is an end result of personal preference?

[LegacyRob]

Straight to the battery terminal would just give a more direct path, doubt it really matters a whole lot though. The direct path uses a lot more wire too, makes it a bit more expensive.

[Wiscon_Mark]

What I did was I made a little block in the middle of the engine bay for all my ground cables, then sent a thicker cable from there to the negative terminal on the battery.

You can run them all to the battery too, but I see no advantage there.

[Sarra]

I tried to keep it simple, but ended up having a crappy looking setup due to stupidity on my part. I need to remake one of the connections, and get more ring terminals. Also need to improve my soldering skills.

[warrior]

Also need to improve my soldering skills.

Soldering is very simple.. all you do is put the soldering iron onto the ring terminal so the bottom of the tip is pressed against the ring terminal and the side of the soldering iron tip is wedged against the bare copper wire.

Then you hold it for about 5 - 10 seconds (depending on how much wattage your soldering iron is) and feed the solder onto the copper. Sometimes it helps to feed the solder in between the tip and the wire. The biggest mistake people make while soldering is; they melt the solder with the soldering iron and try to put the melted solder on the connection.

You need to heat the connection, then feed the solder onto the connection. The solder never touches the tip unless you're cheating to speed up the heating process. Check out my mad tight photoshop skills!

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/solder-1.jpg

[LegacyRob]

I just used squeeze type rings with heat shrink to seal it, seemed to work pretty good.

[warrior]

You can do that too.. but I like to fully insulate my connections with solder :D.. never have to worry about a bad connection or the crimp falling apart :cool:

[Kraziken]

My grounding mod pics.

I used a monster cable post splitter. It's not absolutely necessary, but it helps clean up the wires. My brothers install was a bit messy.

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/DSCN0218-1.jpg

A pic of the battery with the ground removed.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/kraziken/DSCN0214.jpg



Some split it up to 5 points, but I just tried 3 extra grounds besides the stock ground.

Here are two points

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/DSCN0289-1.jpg

And one to the block.

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/DSCN0288-1.jpg



A pic of the monster cable post attached to the battery.

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/DSCN0287-1.jpg

A long distance engine shot.

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2007/06/DSCN0290-1.jpg