Kind of on-topic but kind of off-topic question...

[Kevokrook77 10+ year member]

Alrighty gentlemen,

A couple of months ago my car got broken into. They took my DVD in-dash and disconnected all the amps, but left them all around my car. It always puzzled me why they didn't take them after going through the trouble of disconnecting them. While reinstalling everything, I saw one of my 4 awg wires had been cut about 2/3 of the way through. My question is this, would teh thief have gotten one hell of a shock by cutting through my ground wire? I have a deep cycle Yellow Top if that helps, I know all of this is irrelevant, but I'm very curious...

Thanks

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[Heresy 10+ year member]

The car's chassis is hooked to the battery's ground. So, there is no voltage potential between the body and the wire so no current will flow if the wire was cut into and the thief was touching the body of the car. However, if he was cutting though the positive line then there is a 12V voltage potential and a pretty large amount of current that could pass through your body and kill you.

 

[GemaRastem 10+ year member]

but at 12 volts the skin's natural resistance probably would have impeded any flow.

 

[Kevokrook77 10+ year member]

maybe it was the power wire, I'll have to go check, ground just sounded right at the time

that actually sounds very right to me, I don't know what I was talking about earlier

I just found it weird that they cut through this wire only 2/3 of the way for no apparent reason

so assuming it was the power wire, what would that do to a human being?