whys the ground wire so short?

[yo0123yo 10+ year member]

how come whenever people say to wire your amps ground they tell you it should be within 3 ft of the amp? whats so bad if its like 5-6 feet away?

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[Phreaker 10+ year member]

Less resistance is my best guess.

 

[Black_Jesus 10+ year member]

the longer the wire, the more the voltage drops

voltage drop = bad

 

[johnecon2001 5,000+ posts]

Less resistance is my best guess.

Correct. The more resistance you have the less power has a chance to flow to the amp. Remember in a DC system, the power flows negative to positive. Hence, the ground wire is VERY important.

You're connecting it to the frame of the car, which in itself offers you quite a bit of resistance all on its own. You don't want to add more to that equation, so keep the length down.

 

[revrider1 5,000+ posts]

I got mine at 2 feet. It should be the shortest possible.

 

[Black_Jesus 10+ year member]

yea but i bet knowing u jmac ur running it to the battery //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[jujumantb 10+ year member]

I call BS on the "short ground is best". In most cars these days, the chassis is a worse conductor than a decent sized wire. The only thing a short ground does for the non-competitor is that it costs less money...

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Mine is 17 feet long ...

So is everyone else's they just use the chassis for most of it. I think I'll stick with the low resistance copper myself...

 

[temperedcore 10+ year member]

I was wondering the same thing. It seems to me that running it straight back to the battery or the block would be better than just to the frame....besides i don't want to cut a hole in the back of my cab to run it to the frame. I could just make 2 runs of cable to my bat and i believe get a better ground...am I wrong?

 

[jujumantb 10+ year member]

I was wondering the same thing. It seems to me that running it straight back to the battery or the block would be better than just to the frame....besides i don't want to cut a hole in the back of my cab to run it to the frame. I could just make 2 runs of cable to my bat and i believe get a better ground...am I wrong?

Kinda depends on the vehicle, whether the resistance from trunk->chassis->battery is more or less than the resistance from xft of xguage wire. Either way, its not gonna make any real difference to the non-competitor who isnt concerned about fractions of a volt.

 

[yacob.naif 10+ year member]

Imagine putting a system in a A8 or a similarly aluminum bodied car, that's gotta be a PITA

 

[xpl0it 10+ year member]

My ground is about 8 inches, soon i'm gonna run some more 0 awg to my battery up front though.

 

[blue93corsica 10+ year member]

Imagine putting a system in a A8 or a similarly aluminum bodied car, that's gotta be a PITA

or a corvette

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Or a boat...Seriously, if 1/0, or 4ga or whatever is good enough for your pos wire, it should be good enough for an equal length ground...

 

[tRiGgEr 5,000+ posts]

Mine is 5 feet. But it's dual 1/0 guage...