Amp ground wire location

[Mikewil79]

Howdy. I had an amp installed a while ago, and am just tired of the engine whine. I'm also getting distortion or interference from either the brake lights or the wiring. The guy who installed said he tried multiple locations for the ground, and settled on the one in the attached picture. It doesn't appear that the paint has been sanded off, maybe scuffed a little. If I completely removed the paint, would this even be a good spot to use?

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[spokey9]

I dunno about that ground...it definitely should've been cleaned to bare metal though

 

[HardofWhoring]

That is why I do my own work.

What is with the bracket?

1. You need a better ground. You could try it, but I would find something better than that. It looks raised, so your terminal wouldn't have a good contact even if you clean it. Even drilling a new hole, cleaning it to metal, and installing a bolt with a nut through would be better than that.

2. You need to take that split loom off that is wrapped around your power wire, and your speaker wires. Those need to be ran separately with space between them.

 

[metalheadjoe 10+ year member]

If it doesn't work correctly, bring it back to the installer. It's as simple as that.

 

[2RZ-FE 10+ year member]

Looks like it was grounded to a factory bolt that is only spot welded to another piece so not a good ground.

 

[Jimi77 5,000+ posts]

Looks suspect to me. Is that the package tray it's grounded to? I'd ground to the rear firewall.

 

[HardofWhoring]

If it doesn't work correctly, bring it back to the installer. It's as simple as that.

Yeah, unless it was done for free, you paid for a finished install, not a rough draft. The problem is there are some REALLY OBVIOUS problems with that, that ANYONE that has installed a couple amps should see. That person SHOULD NOT be installing amps.

 

[HardofWhoring]

Did they do this? This "bracket" is silly. The problem I have is they were willing to drill through your metal for that, but not to give you a good ground.

Your ground ends at your chassis. From your amp, it is going the path of least resistance and ending at your chassis. If you have better access to your chassis, then your grounding cable should be longer and go there.

From where that it is, your ground goes through that bolt, through sheet meal, and unless that's a unibody car, it is going through a grounding strap to your chassis.


If you want to fix it yourself, (or tell them how to do it). That grounding bolt looks raised off the sheet metal. It looks like you are getting half the contact you would if, you would just drill a hole through the sheet metal, clean it, and ground anywhere else flat, that the connector sits flush against the sheet metal.

I still think your ground loop is being caused by all those cables being ran together.

P.S. Tell that rookie to cut his zip ties flush.

 

[JasoninDLH]

I agree…not a very good install. Hopefully you didn’t pay much (hopefully it was free).

Get your DMM (or find someone who has one) and find a better ground (something the installer should have done).



And agreed….running the power wire with the rest of the wiring isn’t a good idea. In my last install I had temporarily intersected my power with my RCA’s (to do some quick testing) and had some noise. Once I lifted the RCA’s off the power wire the noise went away.