So i have a 94 accord ground wire kit, but I have no idea how to instaill it. Has anyone ever done one? and is there anything I should know before I do it? Thanks

What is a ground wire kit. What is it supposed to do?

its supposed to stabilize the grounding in the car, since it connects from the negative post on the battery to parts such as the alternator, engine, transmission, and other things. The stabilization is supposed to increase power.

Uh, you already have a ground for all those parts....stabilization? Sounds like a scam....

its manufacture by mugen, and who knows, maybe it is.

The installation of another ground system in addition to the frame ground can create ground loops which can cause great havoc and upredicatable operation of electronic parts. If you want to improve things, just make sure that existing ground points to the car frame , especially the battery, alternator, lights, engine to frame are good.

The installation of another ground system in addition to the frame ground can create ground loops which can cause great havoc and upredicatable operation of electronic parts. If you want to improve things, just make sure that existing ground points to the car frame , especially the battery, alternator, lights, engine to frame are good.

I disagree. Anything that is supposed to be grounded is supposed to have the strongest ground possible. There is no such thing as too much ground. It's been said (and my own experiece concurs) that up to 90% of sensor malfunctions that set fault codes and erratic peerformance of electronics can be ultimately traced back to a broken or degraded ground circuit. In fact that is one of my favorite "tricks"...before chasing my tail hunting an erratic electical demon, I'll hook jumper cables from the neg battery cable to the engine block and a good unpainted body ground point, and many times the problem disappears, and the problem traces back to a corroded/broken ground strap from motor to chassis, battery to chassis, etc.

Addition of a secondary ground path sounds like a great idea if you are running aftermarket electronics (engine/tranny controllers, high powered stereo equipment, etc) as the existing ground system is made to be only the minimum required for the electrical load placed on the ground system by OE electrics, and a small amount of accessories. Overtaxing an existing ground system causes the current to first overheat the ground path, which can cause failure, at which point the current will seek the next most convenient path to ground, which in electronics is usually in the form of arcing, which generates large buildups and discharges of current that fry electronics almost instantly. This is why in any electronic installation the first instruction is always to find a good grounding point and connect the unit to it before doing any other wiring. If you hook up hot power first, the instant you try to connect a ground, the current which is present but unable to complete a circuit will arc to the ground before the wire actually makes contact, and the resulting high-amp discharge through the unit will burn it out.

So there is no such thing as too much ground path. The ONLY way it could be a problem is if you somehow grounded something that shouldn't be, obviously. That would be a disaster. But certain things are ALWAYS supposed to be grounded on a vehicle, they include the engine block, frame, body, and dash support. Other things like doors are theoretically grounded through physical contact with the body through hinges, but in fact aren't storngly due to paint and lubricants in the hinge...so a secondary ground wire is supplied to things like power window, lock, and mirror controls, and a broken ground wire to a door is a common cause of malfunction with those items.

Creating a super strong ground path will reduce the load on the alternator and the battery, as well as reduce amp draw and operating temps of equipment running off the car's electrical system, and any kind of surge or overvolt will be dissapated quickly, without creating the kind of current build-up ahead of the nominal ground path that may lead to damage.

Think of it this way....electricity is a closed system. The same electrons are just being pumped through the system to perform work. Just as it arrives to all the things it operates by increasingly smaller wires as it diverges to the components, once the load is powered, they must all filter back to the battery by way of the ground system. They do this by being collectively dumped into the chassis or engine block, this saves the expense and complexity of having a similar network of negative wires all converging into larger cables and returning to the battery. That would be ridiculous, and the car would have twice the wiring.

So most loads are either directly connected to common ground, and derive their ground from contact with it, or if not feasable they are connected by the shortest piece of wire that will reach a common ground. Works great, until one common ground's contact begins to degrade over time, and then a chain reaction of high operating amps and stolen grounds (as higher amp items "steal" ground path from lower amp items, rendering them suddenly inoperative) Ever see a car that's tail lights go dark when they step on the brake? Then you've seen it. The higher demand from the 12V elements of the brake lights overcomes and demands the entire ground path available, and removes the ground path to the lower voltage tail lamp elements. I gaurantee you what's left of that ground wire is running very, very hot when this happens, and it won't last long. I've seen similar effects with just about every other sytem in a car, where one thing saps ground away from something else, and since there's not enough to go around, the lower amp item looses. also sometimes you can have high amp items with a missing ground actually forcing a ground path through nearby circuits that ARE grounded, causing them to operate in an unwanted manner. This is kinda what you see if you've ever had a turn signal indicator on the dash that comes on dimly when you turn the lights on...

Anyway, upshot, there is no such thing as too much ground path. Do I think you'll see any noticeable improvement from it? Probably not, unless you are seriously straining the sytem currently with accessories. But there is probably a benefit in the form of increased electronic life, and some protection from sudden failure. It will probably free up a small amount of alternator capacity, so if you are running a groundshaking audio system, you might see a bit less clipping at high output levels....and if your existing chassis ground were to fail suddenly for some reason (I've found lots of corroded, broken ground straps under vehicles), it wouldn't spell instant death for your aftermarket electronics.

You're entitled to your opinion, jeffcoslacker, but any electronic engineer will tell your that there ARE such things as ground loops. Whether the effect of one is actually sufficient to affect a car's electronics, I couldn't say. But two separate grounds from a component CAN cause a current-flowing loop.

If it was any good, car maufacturers would do it long time ago! No doubt! Especialy manufacturer like Honda.

jeffcoslacker is right about poor ground. But all you need is to get good ground back. It is that simple.

If your engine bay is covered with grime, if you can hardly see anything there, than the grounding kit may do something. Otherwise this is a waste of money!

Sam

If it was any good, car maufacturers would do it long time ago! No doubt! Especialy manufacturer like Honda.

jeffcoslacker is right about poor ground. But all you need is to get good ground back. It is that simple.

If your engine bay is covered with grime, if you can hardly see anything there, than the grounding kit may do something. Otherwise this is a waste of money!

Sam

Car manufacturers don't do anything more than is required to make the car reasonably reliable, and cheap to build and buy. Any kind of redundancy or overbuilding is simply not part of the plan. There are tons of worthwhile improvements that aren't included in normal car manufacture. There are loads of things included in most cars that aren't really the best answer, but make the car much faster and cheaper to build. Things like serpentine belt systems, strut suspensions, rack and pinion steering.

The old argument that if it was beneficial, cars would be built with it doesn't always apply. it depends on the intended use. A lot of things that are standard equipment now started out as exotic or aftermarket items, and people said the same thing about them. They became practical only when the cost went down and the demand arose. Like electric pancake radiator fans. Tuned exhaust systems. HID headlights. High volume electric fuel pumps. Independant rear suspension. Active suspension. Low profile tires and alloy wheels. Front and rear strut tower braces.

Things you will see more of along those lines are variable electric water pumps, camless valve trains, head gasket eliminating head/block castings (one piece), etc. All doable now, just not seen as cost effective or neccessary, but way more durable and efficient than what we currently have.

Anyway, to add a ground kit to a relatively stock vehicle is a waste of time and money, yes. A vehicle carrying a high load amp of electronic accesories it is very valuable, if not a neccessity. But along with it would go an alternator upgrade, larger or dual battery setup, and large gauge dedicated positive supply cables.

You're entitled to your opinion, jeffcoslacker, but any electronic engineer will tell your that there ARE such things as ground loops. Whether the effect of one is actually sufficient to affect a car's electronics, I couldn't say. But two separate grounds from a component CAN cause a current-flowing loop.

I'd need a better explaination. I'm obviously no electrical engineer, but I know how to interpret what I see. A gorund loop feedback occurs when an INSUFFICIENT or absent ground path causes the current to seek an alternate path to ground, which it will do through the nearest and most conveniant circuit.

We tend to think of electricity in terms of positive and negative, but that's really a bit misleading in the largest sense, because they just describe the same thing, only before and after the load. The current flowing from a load to a return ground is the same type as the current flowing to the load, and if you connect a second load in it's path, it will power that load as well, albeit with some loss in efficiency. This is wiring in series, like old Christmas lights.

So if the ground is broken, the current will seek a ground path in a related circuit. In doing so, it can power the second circuit as it flows through that circuit to ground. This is the analogy of the dimly glowing T/S indicator when the lights are on that I mentioned. This kind of feedback can be destructive to BOTH circuits, because the primary is being forced to see a ground through a less than ideal path, and in powering up the second circuit, is causing additional load on the supply side, higher amp draw, and possibly reverse flow through the secondary circuit. If the secondary circuit is electronic in nature, and the current flow is reversed, obviously the secondary circuit is going to fail, and there will be a conflict of polarities if the secondary circuit is activated while this is occuring.

But if you are suggesting that adding an additional or improved ground has ever damaged anything, you'll need to explain that to me, because I don't see it as a possibility.

I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it doesn't make sense with any theory of electrics that I'm used to. Like I said, I'm nowhere near an electronic engineer.

Jeffco, I didn't state or imply that it would cause damage - I doubt that. But electronic malfunction? Possibly. Today's car computers are susceptible to small current changes. A change in current can be seen by the ECU, for example, as a sensor problem and hence an engine problem, and result in unpredictable consequences. You refer to grounds as if they are only open or closed. There are such things as higher or lower resistance paths, and those are what cause the problem. Remember we're talking about parallel here, not series.
Here is an instrument company's description of ground loops and their effect: http://www.branom.com/literature/groundloop.html

Don't get hung up on brake lights. The problem is not with them, it's with the car's electronics, as mpumas stated much more succintly than I did.

Poor grounding in a circuit does not cause more current to be drawn but rather less current as the poor ground acts as a resistor and creates a voltage drop in the circuit, thus dim or no lights. Good grounds are important but manufacturer grounds are adequate. Buy the way Jeff, are you the local distributor for these monster grounds in CO.

I know I'm in a hole here ;)

Like I said, I'm no engineer.

The example provided seems to deal with AC circuits. Everything beyond the rectifier in a car deals with DC current.

Most automotive sensors use minute changes in voltages, well below the 12- 14v existing in the system, to do the signalling. Therefore amperage is irrelevant, as long as the voltage is consistant. The ECM reads voltage changes through wide open grounds to sense conditions. By using low voltages, there is always a steady supply. That's why we use DC in cars, much simpler and more consistant.

In your example, the fault was caused by having the transmitter and reciever tied to a common ground with different potential...which in a car's DC system would be analogous to one system's ground path being degraded and unable to handle the full load applied to it, and a ground loop is generated...this would only occur due to increased impedance in one ground path, not by addition of a redundant path. That's all I've been trying to say.

Even in your own example, the problem is caused by one component having a less conductive path to ground, causing feedback current that is sensed in the signalling flow. This is what I was getting at when I was speaking of "stealing ground" which is non-technical but how I've come to think of it, forcing one component to give up some of it's ground, dropping the voltage of that circuit to accomodate the larger load. If all the loads on that circuit share one path to ground that is more than enough to accomodate both, the problem is eliminated. That might not be practical in an AC system in a factory or whatever with loads of high powered equipment turning on and off constantly and using whatever ground is available in the area where they are connected, but that's why we use low volt, low amp electrics in cars with a shared ground.