ground kit

thispecialk

do ground kit really work?

FuszNissan

It's been a while, but when I had an 03 350 there where a lot of people that tested them and said they smoothed out there idle, and throttle response. I had one on my 350, and I honestly couldn't tell a difference.

__________________
Mods: Too Many to list!
LouFuszNissan
ZDAYZ 2012

thispecialk

kool thnx for the info

wstar

I have one on my 370. Considering it's dirt cheap and takes like 10 minutes to install, I felt it was worth the electrical insurance so to speak. I haven't really noticed any big difference that couldn't be attributed to wishful thinking. But especially w/ the Stillen headers (removes a stock engine ground wire) and relocated battery, I figured the extra grounding can't hurt.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

nogoodname

makes a difference as in behind the scenes type thing.
you may not notice it but the electronic system will thank you for it.


maybe this weekend i'll measure the wire lengths for the G's and Z's
and just make them...lol...finally..

Modshack

Modern cars are pretty complex electrically...There are lots of opinions both for and against. My opinion is it certainly cannot hurt. I did a custom set-up on my last Audi which was particularly challenged electrically,and it seemed to improve smoothness, light intensity etc. but only minimally..

__________________

Steal my car! (SOLD)...Now Porsche Cayman S
Oil Cooler DIY: Here!

nogoodname

only older cars greatly benefit from a grounding kit because the ground wire are super tiny and thin. it gets a bad connection after a while. so a new wire makes a noticeable difference.

Shunya

just what this babie says, you might not feel it but your electronics will love you

nogoodname

^^ stop calling me a baby......lol

Shunya

that's what ur avatar is tho!

kannibul

I have enough electrical/electronics knowledge to know that they don't make a bit of difference (save for $placebo$ effect) until you're talking about huge levels of current (or wire that has mostly failed due to corrosion)...which except for the starter (when in use), you won't ever hit that high of a level of current.

A set of huge filter caps between your alternator and your cars electronics would do more for making your electronics happy....and even those are designed to operate well within the levels of output your alternator can produce...

wstar

If it were really that simple, there wouldn't bee any need for excess ground wiring at all. You'd just ground the block with one big fat cable somewhere between the block and the body, run another big fat line between the battery negative terminal and the body, and be done with it as far as ground reference is concerned. Then you'd run the grounding for various sensors and components to the body or block wherever convenient. As long as all wires are rated for the correct amperage and all connections are of good quality, that should be the end of it in the simple view.

However, take a look at the stock wiring Nissan puts in the car. There's basically already a "grounding-kit"-like layout going on, with extra grounding bus wires attaching at multiple points around the block and the body of the engine bay. They're doing that for a reason, and my suspicion (not being a car electronics genius or anything) is that they are trying to ensure that all ground references are equal to a certain precision.

Think back to basic ohm's law. Any time you have resistance between two points, you have a voltage difference for current flowing between those two points. Since the body and the engine block are not superconducters, they do have resistances which are non-trivial, and probably not nearly as low as a length of fat copper wire running the same distance.

Without the extra grounding, therefore, if you had a pair of sensors, one on each side of the engine, which are grounded to the block and receive battery voltage over copper, one might be receiving +14.5V and the other +14.4V, because the grounding points they're using on the block are different (there's resistance in the block between them), and one of them is grounded "closer" to the battery resistance-wise.

The more low-resistance ground paths you can add in close proximity to the grounding points of various sensors at the body/block in the engine bay, the more you can reduce this source of ground reference error. That would be a good reason for Nissan to add all the extra wrap-around grounding-wire paths they do at the factory, and more of the same certainly can't hurt.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

kannibul

Except when you get ground-loop issues (issues when "ground" between two points has a differential voltage, can generate electrical noise in electronic devices)

The main reason I can think of that there would be multiple grounding points on the engine would be in the case of the components being seperated, or the materials being grounded have enough resistance in them to cause a voltage drop.

That said, I imagine that Nissan would have electrical engineers smart enough and thorough enough to recognize this issue and ground things appropriately.


My main point was from the angle that installing one won't give you any performance increase, or even a reliability increase.

wstar

Adding more low-resistance paths (like the grounding kit) can only reduce the voltage differential between two points, not increase it. Therefore if anything it would cure rather than cause what you're describing above (which is basically the same thing I was talking about).

Right, the components are separated. There are several different sensors and actuators all around the engine and the engine bay, all of which should preferably share a common ground as closely as possible, and use the engine block or body metal as grounds. The body of the car and the engine block are grounded, but both are poorer conductors than good copper wire. Therefore extra ground paths are added to overcome this and reduce any ground variation between different spots on the block and on the body within the bay.

If it helps sensors and actuators perform better (as in, return more accurate sensing results, and actuate at precisely the right moment intended), that's good news. Random examples: it might help both of your MAF sensors read more accurately relative to each other, ditto for the dual wideband O2 sensors in our headers. Neither is going to show up on a dyno most likely, but they will make the car healthier in the general sense.

Like I said though, personally I haven't seen any hard results from mine. If there's any effect, it's too small to really verify afaics. Then again, the cost and installation difficulty is really small too, so it still seems like a decent deal to me.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

FricFrac

.... as an Electronics Engineer let me say that wstar is definately on the right path. We aren't talking about carrying tons of current we are worried about milivolts accuracy for the vast array of sensors on the car. Sure it will work just fine with the stock system and as you will note they have done a very good job with their mesh network.

It comes down to this - do 10ths of a second make a difference driving home? Nope. Does it make a difference on a race track - definately. Do milivolts of accuracy with your sensor make a difference driving home?.......

__________________
'09 370Z - '93 300ZX Vert - '83 280ZX - '83 280ZXT -'81 280ZXT stroker - '72 240Z - Stillen CBE, HFC, G3, Grounding Kit, Sways // Swift Spring // H&R 15mm // 5% Tint // Clear Bra //