I just replaced the ground on my 04 Ranger. It was doing weird electrical stuff before it got the no-crank, no-jump situation on a battery that tested 638 CCA. I spent 3 weeks troubleshooting and throwing parts at it that didn’t help. Rock Auto wanted $60 for a new ground line. I had some OO wire and lugs. I made a new cable in less time than it took to remove the old cable.
My new grounds start with a stainless bolt threaded into a tapped hole, with the head torqued firmly against a bare metal surface. I then weld the head of the bolt to the metal. On the other side I have bare metal coated with dielectric silicone. Each wire connector is seated and coated in turn. When all are connected, I use a stainless nylock nut or double jam nuts to secure. This is my standard trailer and truck grounding procedure
Overkill – when too much is almost enough.
I had an issue with the 93 Lincoln one time. If you rolled up the windows, while driving down the road, the engine would quit. Took me a couple of days to find a ground screw, under the carpet, that had rotted off. The electric fuel pump and the rear windows shared that ground point. The car had half a dozen new grounding straps by time I was done with it. Didn’t have an issue when I got finished.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Well, mine was a Chebbie Citation – don’t remember the year. My sister’s car kept blowing fuses, it took me three weeks to find the spot where the wiring bundle took a turn into the firewall and had rubbed into the wires and grounded them occasionally!
I’ve found the same condition on OTHER Citations, as well.
I didn’t think anyone was grounded around here.
I am the only one that is grounded. I have no potential.
Your polarity was reversed in the womb…
For the better too! I was hatched male, I do have a twin sister. I was that close…
Wow, dodged a bullet (or something) there!
Instead of being positive you are always negative.
i learned to use multimeter to test new (or old) grounds, mainly for car audio.
it does make a difference, especially when a spot ‘looks’ good for grounding. one probe to the ground, one to battery negative, should be .4 ohms or less, .2 is good
you’d be surprised what spots are shit and which are fine when tested
We had to use a “megger” to measure the bonding between ANYthing on the missile sites, the bond resistance had to be .01 Ohms or less. You read that right, .01 Ohms.
When a nuke EMP comes along, anything more than that resistance can cause hundreds or thousands of volts potential across various subsystems!! Do the math, it’ll knock your socks off.
The EMP put out by a megaton device going off nearby is… uh… VERY energetic. Lots of zeros in the amps generated.
Sometimes you can find a “flaky” ground by scanning around with a infrared thermometer. Any spot with a temp higher than the surrounding is suspect. Also works on positive connections.
Good for finding piss poor connections, ground or otherwise. Also good for breaker panels to find overloaded circuits.
Years ago I worked in the nondestructive metallurgical testing industry. Mostly using eddy currents. One day I find myself at a Alcoa aluminum plant with a giant thermal imaging camera. I’m looking for hot spots. The whole damn place is hot. It’s a furnace already!!! So anyway I end up going through a couple floors of mostly office space. I’m walking down a hallway and pass a door to a utility closet. As soon as the door is opened I knew something was wrong. Way too much heat in there. The maintenance guy opens a very large panel box that is lighting the camera up like crazy. I pinpoint a large lug that had worked loose and the wire wasn’t making a good contact. The insurance company that hired the inspection felt they got their money’s worth just from that series of pictures alone.
I just replaced the ground on my 04 Ranger. It was doing weird electrical stuff before it got the no-crank, no-jump situation on a battery that tested 638 CCA. I spent 3 weeks troubleshooting and throwing parts at it that didn’t help. Rock Auto wanted $60 for a new ground line. I had some OO wire and lugs. I made a new cable in less time than it took to remove the old cable.
My new grounds start with a stainless bolt threaded into a tapped hole, with the head torqued firmly against a bare metal surface. I then weld the head of the bolt to the metal. On the other side I have bare metal coated with dielectric silicone. Each wire connector is seated and coated in turn. When all are connected, I use a stainless nylock nut or double jam nuts to secure. This is my standard trailer and truck grounding procedure
Overkill – when too much is almost enough.
I had an issue with the 93 Lincoln one time. If you rolled up the windows, while driving down the road, the engine would quit. Took me a couple of days to find a ground screw, under the carpet, that had rotted off. The electric fuel pump and the rear windows shared that ground point. The car had half a dozen new grounding straps by time I was done with it. Didn’t have an issue when I got finished.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Well, mine was a Chebbie Citation – don’t remember the year. My sister’s car kept blowing fuses, it took me three weeks to find the spot where the wiring bundle took a turn into the firewall and had rubbed into the wires and grounded them occasionally!
I’ve found the same condition on OTHER Citations, as well.
I didn’t think anyone was grounded around here.
I am the only one that is grounded. I have no potential.
Your polarity was reversed in the womb…
For the better too! I was hatched male, I do have a twin sister. I was that close…
Wow, dodged a bullet (or something) there!
Instead of being positive you are always negative.
i learned to use multimeter to test new (or old) grounds, mainly for car audio.
it does make a difference, especially when a spot ‘looks’ good for grounding. one probe to the ground, one to battery negative, should be .4 ohms or less, .2 is good
you’d be surprised what spots are shit and which are fine when tested
We had to use a “megger” to measure the bonding between ANYthing on the missile sites, the bond resistance had to be .01 Ohms or less. You read that right, .01 Ohms.
When a nuke EMP comes along, anything more than that resistance can cause hundreds or thousands of volts potential across various subsystems!! Do the math, it’ll knock your socks off.
The EMP put out by a megaton device going off nearby is… uh… VERY energetic. Lots of zeros in the amps generated.
Sometimes you can find a “flaky” ground by scanning around with a infrared thermometer. Any spot with a temp higher than the surrounding is suspect. Also works on positive connections.
Good for finding piss poor connections, ground or otherwise. Also good for breaker panels to find overloaded circuits.
Years ago I worked in the nondestructive metallurgical testing industry. Mostly using eddy currents. One day I find myself at a Alcoa aluminum plant with a giant thermal imaging camera. I’m looking for hot spots. The whole damn place is hot. It’s a furnace already!!! So anyway I end up going through a couple floors of mostly office space. I’m walking down a hallway and pass a door to a utility closet. As soon as the door is opened I knew something was wrong. Way too much heat in there. The maintenance guy opens a very large panel box that is lighting the camera up like crazy. I pinpoint a large lug that had worked loose and the wire wasn’t making a good contact. The insurance company that hired the inspection felt they got their money’s worth just from that series of pictures alone.