Grounding Good!!

[erockp5]

After reading all the grounding chat I decide to see for myself. Went to Home Depot electrical section bought some 1/0 and 4AWG and some connectors and terminal blocks. I didn't even disconnect the factory grounds.

I grounded the block and intake manifold with with 1-1/0 and 1-4AWG each and attached them to the same place the battery ground attaches to the frame(the small wire from the negative terminal).

Unbelievable! The car is so quiet now I can't hear it and the only vibration is in the stick(just a little). Even though I cheaped out a bit I thank those who pointed this out. For anybody on a budget this can be done with $25 of parts from Home Depot. Although the kits do look much sportier this is some worth doing no matter what.

 

[erockp5]

Sorry I didn't leave much to comment on. I just wanted to thank the people who mentioned this in previous threads and jarod from the Hwy9 meets for showing me his grounding kit install.
I just thought it was worth a mention to newbies like me who may have missed it.
I bought my p5 several months ago and appreciate all the helpful info on the site.

 

[b_real45]

Nice.. I recently did the same thing with my friend's EVO. We also left *most* of the stock grounds in. Although my friend decided it was ok to use only 8gauge wire... I'm like wtf.. you spend $32,000 on an EVO.. and dont want to pay a few cents extra per foot on 4gauge wire??

 

[Kahukah]

i'm not quite sure i understand what you mean... is there a n00blar explanation?

 

[spacerabbit]

Yeah, forgive me for being a moron, but what are you guys talking about? I see your talking about electrical grounding, but how goes that reduce noise in the passenger cabin? I mean, I guess I could see it reducing audio noise in your stereo, is that what you are talking about? I'd like to learn about this grounding to reduce noise.

Thanks,
SpaceRabbit

 

[erockp5]

The short answer is that by making the ground path have less resistance you decrease the load on the electrical system when it is generating power. The car runs quieter because it does not have the added strain of fighting this resistance.
To see what I mean start your car with everything off and then when it comes up to temp and idling around 750rpm turn on you A/C. This is about the difference I noticed between the before and after grounding. The engine runs a bit harder to drive your A/C.
Hope that makes some sense. I'm sure the grounding kit have some explaination also.

 

[spacerabbit]

Cool, makes sense to me. Where can I find these groundings kits?

Thanks again,
SpaceRabbit

 

[erockp5]

SpaceRabbit,

Go to the forum section titled - For Sale / Group Buy. Then search on "grounding". There were 4 threads, one with a lot of pictures and discussion on the subject. One Cheaper kit cost $40, the others are $80-120.
I did mine as an experiment, just the engineer in me, so I installed it to be removed if there wasn't a noticeable difference. I may try later to figure out exactly what has changed but for now these people should be able to get you going.
Hope you find the info you need.

 

[p5sundevil]

like what was said above go and find those threads for a better explanation but simply you are gorunding all the major parts of the car that have an electrical current running through them. The reason for this is as the electricity passes through all those parts there is loss and interference between the parts because of the energy being put off. By ground all these parts there is no more interference and no more electrical loss.

The result is smoother exceleration, possibly lower idle but definately smoother idle and a minor improvement in gas milage(also depending on how you drive your car). On some cars they have shown anywhere from a 1hp to 5hp increase from these systems but I would tink on the protege's it might be 1 or 2 if your lucky and hp increase is not the reason to do a ground wire kit.

Best deal out there is probably on ebay, they have replicas of the HKS circle earth ground wire system which retail for 125 for 38 shipped. That is what I got and I think you can choose between red and blue wire covers to match whatever else you have in your engine bay.

 

[erockp5]

One last post on this. I told two friends about it one grew up in detroit building fast cars and the other an Electrical eng I have worked with. After tell them it made the car quieter I had to try and understand all the reasons and found a very good FAQ on the subject. No smoke and mirrors. Before and after dyno tests, oscilliscope shots of spark ignition, cabin sound measurements and good explainations of the results. So maybe people can just recommend it for people wanting to understand and be convinced it does something. AS they say though, your results may vary.

Sigma automotive in Japan, very good FAQ

http://www.sigmaautomotive.com:8080/EGS/bodymainegs.html

I also included this link from volvo because it gives a good basic electrical tutorial.

http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/Volvo_Books/elec2.html

later

 

[Matthew]

moving this thread to the performance section

 

[Monstermile]

Good explanation on the purpose of grounding kits. Before coming here I had never heard of such a thing.