Grounding questions
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Cargo Master
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 2,281
Likes: 18
From: Northern California
Grounding questions
I painted the frame and underside of the bed and was thinking of a good way to get proper ground to the rear lights.
I was thinking about running a thick battery cable from the battery to the rear and tapping off of that. I'd still have the regular ground to the block and fender well, so this would be an additional one.
The reason I question this is that I had two grounds to the block, one thick and one thin one. This seemed to cause a problem as the thin one started smokin, so I'm wondering about that old 'path of least resistance' rule.
Any info would be helpful, thanks, Karl.
I was thinking about running a thick battery cable from the battery to the rear and tapping off of that. I'd still have the regular ground to the block and fender well, so this would be an additional one.
The reason I question this is that I had two grounds to the block, one thick and one thin one. This seemed to cause a problem as the thin one started smokin, so I'm wondering about that old 'path of least resistance' rule.
Any info would be helpful, thanks, Karl.
Posting Guru
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,117
Likes: 0
From: Evanston, WY
Grounding questions
Not a reason in the world I can think of why you couldn't do that. Might be just as easy to weld a small bolt to the rear part of the frame somewhere then repaint the weld. The frame has very little resistance as long as its well grounded at the front. That would give you a very clean and permanent grounding point. Could even be cheaper than 20' of battery cable and clamps to hold it to the frame.
-Scouder
-Scouder
Posting Guru
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 1,984
Likes: 2
Grounding questions
Hi Karl. Don't fool with an extra ground cable. The frame/cab/bed of the truck functions very well as the electrical ground. Just run grounding straps where needed. I suspect that the smoking cable you mentioned was caused by poor connections, rather than the size of the cable....
Moderator
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 56,966
Likes: 2,728
From: Virginia
Grounding questions
You are right about the path of least resistance rule. The cable that was large enough to handle the load, must have had a bad connection like the other poster said, so the current went to the smaller wire, which had good connections with less resistance, but was too small to handle the load that the large wire was supposed to be handling at the time.
