The first time I used extra grounds, it killed my battery. I replaced the battery and removed a ground from the alternator and it worked great. (I grounded the a mount bolt on the alternator which should have been fine)

 

I kept the stock ground wire. Mainly because the bolt was already rounded off.

I added a 4 gauge piece of wire from the battery to a bolt on the radiator support bar which already had the ground of the HID relay. They paint has been sanded so it is pure metal to metal contact.

I have my volt gauge hardwired into my cigarette lighter, which has nothing plugged into it.

So far the voltage has stayed constant on my trip into town but I only had a few stop lights. Yeah I have no idea why my voltage is spiking and dropping. It only varies from 12-14v. The weird thing is that if I am @ a stoplight and it drops from 14v to 12v, if I put my car in neutral it immediately jumps back up to 14v.

 

I have no idea man. I will say that I don't think that is a good ground. While there may continuity, there is probably high resistance from either rubber isolators or paint. Try attaching your ground directly to a body panel. First disconnect that ground and see if the voltage problem stops, which I bet it will. Then move grounds, even your HIDs.

 

But I sanded down the paint where the terminals meet the metal so it is pure metal to metal. No paint is interfering. And adding only that ground shouldnt have any adverse effects because I left the original oem ground hooked up as well. Electricity takes the path of less resistance, so I should be good to go.

I'll just see how it does this week.

 

What I'm saying is the actually bracket you are mounting to is not a good ground. Some pieces are rubber isolated or have paint between the joints.

 

You mean to discharge the cap when you turn off the car. The resistor would work fine because at that high resistance, the load would be the path of least resistance. The resistor will allow the cap to trickle-drain when it is not getting a charge. If you do not have a high power relay keeping this from draining your battery, I wouldn't recommend this. A 12V light will definately kill your battery. Need the right size fuse holder.

That should be good for about an extra 40A capacity, but I agree with Danny that there are better places to put a ground.

12-14 Volts is normal. If you are concerned, get the charging system tested at Sears for free.


This is true however, the electricity favors the surface, but nothing prevents it from traveling in the core of the wire. As the wire's capacity is approached, the resistance goes up and the concentration of electricity balances out to a degree .... aka, the core handles around the last 25% of wire capacity. An interesting point to note is that a wire's rating comes from the gauge size of the conductor and the temperature rating of the insulation, not the stranding. Smaller stranding does lead to a lower resistance wire though, so it is a design consideration.

It also has disclaimer that the numbers are very conservative. Also, the car was designed to have a max current of about 80A, not a continuous 80A. This has a big effect on the original design needs for the grounding ..... goes back to the insulation temp thing, if the wire doesn't see the high amount of power for long enough to heat up, a slightly smaller wire can be used. This is similar to designing a building with a chiller that has less capacity than the sum of the peak loads .... it only has to support the total block load.

For the amount of power that we are talking about, you really can't go too big, but on large systems like power plants and large-scale generators, that is a good analogy. How you are looking at the duct is a tiny bit off though. Too large a duct does create a lower static pressure situation in the dynamic sense, but this is not why it's a bad duct choice. The problem is that you've increased the volume of air that has to be moved in order for the system to reach steady state operation. In a fairly extreme or large system, this delay in reaching steady state could compromise the controllability of the system. Too large a duct is similar to too large turbo piping causing extra lag.

I don't think that the lengths of the wires matters for grounding.

I was leaning more toward the load dictating the power draw, but it seems that we're saying the same thing in different ways .... happens to me a lot!

The Alternator lead is only an 8ga.? On my accord I think it was a 6ga. Remember tat there are (2) 8ga. grounds ... chasis and block. Most of the car's power draw is form the ignition and the lights, so that block ground handles a lot of the power needs.

Big 3 is definately a good upgrade, but it is only necessary when powerful electronics are added to the car. My comments about the stock wiring design apply to the stock electrical components. When you add 2000W of amp, big wires are necessary.

As capacity is approached, resistance increases and the power would self balance due to larger resistances on the shorter wires.

 

I highly doubt that the ground was the cause ..... perhaps a frayed strand got to make contact with the alternator rotor? I try to stay away from the belts with wiring .... just good practice.

I still think the Voltage range is normal.

I agree. Brackets are not designed to conduct electricity at the mounts. I bet there is a good bolt on the engine that can be used! On my accord, I found a tapped hole in the head and simple bought a bolt to fit it for my ETD custom install. A similar mount would work here.

 

I am only using it to slowly charge and drain the capacitor. It is not permanent, I will simply put the bulb in place of the fuse to let the cap slowly charge to prevent arcing, remove it, and then replace the fuse.

So you think it is okay that the voltage jumps from 12-14v? Once I get about 40mph it goes back up to 14v. I though a vehicle needed a constant source of 14v to prevent damage from inadequate power. It sometimes is in sync when my transmission downshifts as I slow down.

 

The fact that it changes predictably when you change things concerns me, not so much that the voltage drops to 12v. I've never seen my voltage go below 14v while driving, but my alternator may never turn off because of my system. If your battery is fully charged I'd imagine the alt has a clutch to disengage it's self. Or the voltage regulator at least brings the voltage down.

EDIT: Dude simply disconnect your new ground and see if the problem goes away. If it does you know it's a bad ground causing funny problems.

 

The problem didn't start with the new ground which I just added yesterday....its been doing this for quite some time Thats why I added it.

The terminal ring on the positive side is also ripped from the dbag who put my battery in. I am going to get a new one soon.