Ground

[jester73440 10+ year member]

Someone was telling me that if you have your ground directly to the frame of the car it will hit harder and less strain on the altenator in stead of a ground to the body of the car. I have my ground on the cross member behind the back seats. Would it be better to ground it to the frame ?

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[bootleg 10+ year member]

It should. Keep in mind that it's not neccesarily the strain on the altenator, but the restrictive flow due to poor connections. This is what I stress to ever install I do or anyone I talk to or see that has an amp, get good connections or die. Just ya know if you see the god awful crap that comes my way you'd understand. (Kinda like when the blonde woman calls a home-repair for her TV and the ****ed thing was unplugged, yeah that kinda stuff.)

 

[more_spl 10+ year member]

what exactly is the frame, and what exactly is the body?

i always thought they were the same thing //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

help?

 

[bootleg 10+ year member]

The body is the part of the car that you see, your seats, doors, hood etc, all that metal that you see on the outside and inside. Now your frame or chassis is a metal structure under it that holds it up and together, you can see under your car by the wheels and the engine.(you may want to ask the jiffy lube mechanic if he can show you next time you get an oil change)

Technicaly they are two seperate parts of an automobile, however are connected as one through welds, bolts or some other form of connection. The connection between the two may very between automobiles but as a rule of thumb you're better off connecting the ground to a peice of chassis instead of the body only because it's better grounded to your electrical systems. Though many don't do this because it's such a pain the asss to do it. Generaly it's just easiest to ground it to the cleanest peice of metal on your car, in exampe your seat fram, a bolt that holds together two peices of metal or some kind of screw that holds down something but goes into metal. But really it all depends on how hardcore you are, I've done mine all over the place and I've seen people even modify their entire chassis to get good grounds.

Again, cars vary. I know the ground in my truck comes from both the chassis and the body but only because I hard wired it like that. I doubt that you will take the effort to get down and dirty to really ground your system so I'd just ground it to the cleanest peice of metal that you can find.(sorry if I lost you in my rant, hopefuly somebody else will explain better than I)

What kind of car do you have anyway?

 

[antilies]

hi i'm new. but i think an other answer is being over looked. run the ground to the batt. - terminal. this is the True ground in the car anyway. but aside from that power in DC circuits flows from - to + so why make it harder to get power to the amp. especially when you have this "freeway" back to the batt. in all of my installs i have alo found this to SEROUSLY reduce noise (alt whine) in the audible rhelm.

i can't say for sure that this will work for every one but every master electrition i have spoken to has sed this was ideal.

later

me

 

[more_spl 10+ year member]

i have a 2000 GrandAm, and i understand your post //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif

 

[chris229 10+ year member]

This is over kill. I would bet their is very very little resistance between the body and the frame. I also bet that any resistance that would be bypassed by connecting to the frame would be nullified by the resistance in the extra wire need to get to the frame!!

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

The frame is isolated from the body with rubber body mounts. There's no doubt bolts that make electrical connection somewhere, but in my opinion you're better off using the body sheet metal for your grounds. I have never seen factory wiring use the frame of a car for ANY electrical connection.

You also need to have an appropriately sized wire from the battery negative to the body. Most cars only have a 10 gage wire for that. As long as this wire is big enough, studies have shown that there is almost zero difference using the car's body vs running a ground directly to the battery.

 

[jester73440 10+ year member]

It's a 96' Thunderbird. I grounded it to the cross member behind the back seat. I used 1/0 gauge wire for the power and ground