Ground straps

[ppeters914]

With all the recent threads on non-starting, hard starting, etc, I took a look and discovered that I have NO ground straps.

Figured I would add two 4 AWG braided stainless steel straps to:

• - engine block to chassis on passenger side
  - starter to chassis on driver side

The battery negative cable was attached to the engine. Should I change that and connect it directly to the chassis?

Any other places I should double-check and/or add a grounding strap to?

Thanks.

[S Allen]

Boy, lucky you have not been driving her much. No grounds straps is a disaster waiting to happen. Fried choke cables-fried accelerator cable to mention the usual. I run the battery ground to the frame, a ground from the single wire alternator to the frame and the ground strap from the starter to the frame. The starter is the biggie but you cannot put too many grounds on. Most electrical problems with a roadster are due to poor grounds. Glad to hear you found it before you cooked something.

Steve

[ppeters914]

Yeah, I had no idea. Takes some of the "I'm not running yet" angst away.

So, you don't have a separate block-to-chassis ground?

[S Allen]

Yes , I do have a block to chassis ground. I missed it in my earlier post.

Steve.

[ppeters914]

I realize copper is better, but three of these:

http://store.summitracing.com/partdetai ... wordSearch

attached at these locations

- starter to chassis
- engine block to chassis
- alternator to chassis

plus the battery ground cable to chassis should do the trick, correct?

[shifty]

With all this talk of grounds, where is the stock engine block ground on a U20? Mine is currently grounded through one of the bolts that mounts the timing cover. It occured to me that this might not be the best place, as the cover is aluminum.

Also there is a little plug near the bottom of the block near the passenger side engine mount. What is it?

Thanks,

[spl310]

Well, the little plug is easy. It is a plug for the main oil gallery. The purpose of it was as an access during the production process. The oil galley for the first main bearing was drilled through that hole.

On the ground strap, I would bolt it to the alternator mounting bracket.