Different way?

[Rebel4055]

Did the big 3 on my truck. Been reading and seen a video drew made. I would like him to chime in too and who ever has the intelligence to respond.

Here is how my setup consists of.

Battery to frame ground

Alternator casing to battery.

Alt positive to battery.

Chassis to battery( want to make it shorter)

[Noobtastic14]

Couple things I see.

In photo 1 is that the frame rail? It looks more like a sub frame and its hard to get my barings with that angle. Just make sure it is to a frame rail that you can also ground to in the back.

Alt ground to bat look solid.

This is a preference thing, and you will see people argue until they are blue in the face on the forums but I believe that fuse on your alternator power wire is useless. A fuse is designed to "protect" something by braking the connection when the line shorts out. With a run that short you can clearly asses any dangers for the wire and keep an eye out on its condition making the fuse kind of pointless. It doesn't hurt keeping it, but I don't think it is doing much unless your alt melts.

Your battery to subframe is also unnessessary IMO, your frame ground is the money maker in this situation the subframe and surrounding body panels are very poor for grounding.

It does look like a solid setup though. The alt - to bat - to frame is the meat and potatos

-Drew

[Rebel4055]

Thanks for the response Drew. Really appreciated. I fused the alt just for precaution sake. Just a piece of mind thing for me. Now by subframe you mean the body? Also in the first picture it's the front strut tower I used for the frame ground. This is in a 06 dodge dakota truck.

I would do a negative run to the amp from the front battery but the wiring is different. The amp wiring is 1/0 battery cable. Instead of thin copper wire it has thick copper wire. I'm afraid of having issues if I did that.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Rebel4055

[Noob_On_Droid]

By subframe I mean the one in Thea last pic.

What issues would you have running your bat. Cable to the front? I've used hundreds of feet of the stuff you are talking about and the worst part of it all is how hard it is to work with and run because of the lack of flexibility but the wire is still good. I grounded my car to the strut towers because I have a unibody and those were thicker solid points. For a vehicle with frame rails I would bolt to that before opting for the strut tower.

[Rebel4055]

By subframe I mean the one in Thea last pic.

What issues would you have running your bat. Cable to the front? I've used hundreds of feet of the stuff you are talking about and the worst part of it all is how hard it is to work with and run because of the lack of flexibility but the wire is still good. I grounded my car to the strut towers because I have a unibody and those were thicker solid points. For a vehicle with frame rails I would bolt to that before opting for the strut tower.

What I meant with the battery cable is the amp is currently wired with it. I was wanting to use the wire in the pictures to do a negative run from the battery to the amp if I had enough. But didn't want to mix those 2 different wires.

That strut tower is apart of the frame. Hard to tell in the pictures. It saved me time trying to get a bolt in there.

[Rebel4055]

Going to bump this for drew.

[MECHMAN]

I would recommend grounding the alternator directly to the battery negative. This gives you the best charging performance.

[Nikitaaa]

Am I realistically going to see a charging difference adding a alternator casing to battery negitive? Don't wanna waste my 0/1..

[HHR Ed]

Id mark the ground wires by wrapping black tape over them at maybe 6" increments. Can be useful in the future.

[Rebel4055]

I would recommend grounding the alternator directly to the battery negative. This gives you the best charging performance.

That is what I did in the beginning thanks for the comment though.