Another DIY Grounding kit Install...
Jun 23, 2006, 07:27 AM
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Another DIY Grounding kit Install...
Materials used:
- Kicker silver tinned hyper-flex wire (4 gauge and 8 gauge)
- Phoenix Gold-Plated Ring terminals (0 guage, 2 gauge, 4 gauge and 8 gauge with black boots)
- Stinger negative battery terminal
Tools used:
- Wire cutters
- Soldering iron and flux
- Crimper
- Bench vise
- Appropriate wrenches for install.
- box cutters
Things to consider:
1) Decide how extensive you want your grounding kit to be. I decided to use 8 or 9 grounding points and daisy chained them
2) Decide how you want it to look. I wanted a stealthy install. You will cut wire to length based on this.
3) Start at one corner and work your way back. I started at the passengers side and worked my way back to the battery as I found it easier.
4) Grounding points:
Here is the order I chose to ground in (starting at the passengers side)
Passengers side fenderwell
to
Passengers side headlight
to
Back on the intake manifold
to
Throttle body cable bracket on intake manifold
to
Side of cylinder head
to
Transmission
to
Drivers side headlight
to
Battery negative terminal
I also ran 2 new grounds from battery to the factory grounding points around it. There are 2 - one where the factory transmission ground is bolted down and another just in front of the fusebox.
I also replaced the puny stock intake manifold to firewall ground.
In addition, I also made a 8 gauge sub-harness that goes from the coil packs to the cylinder head, throttle body bracket, intake manifold and finally to the body on the firewall (under center strut bar bolts)
Also, I made a single line to run from alternator to the -ve terminal (yet to put on)
Assembling the grounding harness:
1) Start at your first and cut wire based on your routing to the 2nd point. Then take the next piece which will begin at 2nd point and, run it to the 3rd grounding point and cut it as well.
2) Strip the wire bare (about 1/2 inch is sufficient) with box cutters.
3) Slide the protective boot on over both wires and push down to point where you stripped in step 3
4) This is the tedious part. When you diasy-chain 2 4 gauge wires, it requires a 0 gauge ring terminal. It requires some serious pressure, any cheapo crimper will not be upto par for this task. I used a heavy duty vise and tugged on every connection as hard as I could before soldering to make sure it doesnt come off. Make sure the ring terminal seats well on both wires and crimp/solder. Then slide boot up to expose just the ring terminal tip.
5) Repeat steps above over and over till you have covered all your grounding points.
6) For the two terminating grounds (at battery and the other end), just use the required ring terminal (I used 4 gauge as thats what the wire was)
7) Disconnect battery
8) Bolt in harness to your ground points. Make sure to ziptie it out of the way near any moving parts such as shift linkage or accessory belts.
8) Re-connect battery and test drive. Make sure you have no new idle problems, strange smells etc
Anyways, here are some pictures of my install which better explain what I did. It turned out good and doesnt really stick out.
Good luck!
- Kicker silver tinned hyper-flex wire (4 gauge and 8 gauge)
- Phoenix Gold-Plated Ring terminals (0 guage, 2 gauge, 4 gauge and 8 gauge with black boots)
- Stinger negative battery terminal
Tools used:
- Wire cutters
- Soldering iron and flux
- Crimper
- Bench vise
- Appropriate wrenches for install.
- box cutters
Things to consider:
1) Decide how extensive you want your grounding kit to be. I decided to use 8 or 9 grounding points and daisy chained them
2) Decide how you want it to look. I wanted a stealthy install. You will cut wire to length based on this.
3) Start at one corner and work your way back. I started at the passengers side and worked my way back to the battery as I found it easier.
4) Grounding points:
Here is the order I chose to ground in (starting at the passengers side)
Passengers side fenderwell
to
Passengers side headlight
to
Back on the intake manifold
to
Throttle body cable bracket on intake manifold
to
Side of cylinder head
to
Transmission
to
Drivers side headlight
to
Battery negative terminal
I also ran 2 new grounds from battery to the factory grounding points around it. There are 2 - one where the factory transmission ground is bolted down and another just in front of the fusebox.
I also replaced the puny stock intake manifold to firewall ground.
In addition, I also made a 8 gauge sub-harness that goes from the coil packs to the cylinder head, throttle body bracket, intake manifold and finally to the body on the firewall (under center strut bar bolts)
Also, I made a single line to run from alternator to the -ve terminal (yet to put on)
Assembling the grounding harness:
1) Start at your first and cut wire based on your routing to the 2nd point. Then take the next piece which will begin at 2nd point and, run it to the 3rd grounding point and cut it as well.
2) Strip the wire bare (about 1/2 inch is sufficient) with box cutters.
3) Slide the protective boot on over both wires and push down to point where you stripped in step 3
4) This is the tedious part. When you diasy-chain 2 4 gauge wires, it requires a 0 gauge ring terminal. It requires some serious pressure, any cheapo crimper will not be upto par for this task. I used a heavy duty vise and tugged on every connection as hard as I could before soldering to make sure it doesnt come off. Make sure the ring terminal seats well on both wires and crimp/solder. Then slide boot up to expose just the ring terminal tip.
5) Repeat steps above over and over till you have covered all your grounding points.
6) For the two terminating grounds (at battery and the other end), just use the required ring terminal (I used 4 gauge as thats what the wire was)
7) Disconnect battery
8) Bolt in harness to your ground points. Make sure to ziptie it out of the way near any moving parts such as shift linkage or accessory belts.
8) Re-connect battery and test drive. Make sure you have no new idle problems, strange smells etc
Anyways, here are some pictures of my install which better explain what I did. It turned out good and doesnt really stick out.
Good luck!
Jun 23, 2006, 08:55 AM
#2
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looks good man, only suggestion would be to move the ones that are on your coil packs to below the plastic so they make contact with the valve cover... great write up also
Jun 23, 2006, 11:38 AM
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Jun 23, 2006, 12:31 PM
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From what I know, the Evo already has good grounds. Grounding kits only really help those cars with foul grounding points. I don't see how something like this would cause any noticeable difference.
Jun 23, 2006, 02:14 PM
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I used about 20 ft of 4 gauge and 1 ft of 8 gauge. Mine is more coz I hid as much as I could and followed stock components. This keeps it out of the way from heat etc as well when I install something else in the future, ya know?
Jun 23, 2006, 06:14 PM
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Originally Posted by inco9nito99
From what I know, the Evo already has good grounds. Grounding kits only really help those cars with foul grounding points. I don't see how something like this would cause any noticeable difference.
Dec 17, 2006, 06:16 PM
#12
Great write up 
. Did you ever get your cable hooked up from your alternator to your battery? I'm curious if you were able to do this without too much of a problem. Also on the grounding cables you hooked up to the coil packs, I believe the original way you did them was O.K. I would believe that the bolt that held the cable to the coil pack would ground through the threads of the valve cover. Putting the cable under the coil pack would work best if the paint was scraped off of the valve cover in order to create a good grounding surface. I'll be doing a full grounding system similiar to yours soon. I just did a 2 gauge cable from the battery to the engine block and one to the chassis and I've already noticed a smoother idle and smoother pull to redline.
. Did you ever get your cable hooked up from your alternator to your battery? I'm curious if you were able to do this without too much of a problem. Also on the grounding cables you hooked up to the coil packs, I believe the original way you did them was O.K. I would believe that the bolt that held the cable to the coil pack would ground through the threads of the valve cover. Putting the cable under the coil pack would work best if the paint was scraped off of the valve cover in order to create a good grounding surface. I'll be doing a full grounding system similiar to yours soon. I just did a 2 gauge cable from the battery to the engine block and one to the chassis and I've already noticed a smoother idle and smoother pull to redline.
Last edited by EvoTio; Dec 17, 2006 at 06:18 PM.
May 19, 2007, 05:01 PM
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When driving car in hot climates, such as So. CA, AC sucks the life out of the car and can cause stalls at low RPM, grounding kit helped eliminate the problem.
