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Ground to the Chassis or Run a Ground Cable? CE Auto Electric Supply Partners with D'Amore Engineering to answer - Video on Pg 5!


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ive been known to do both dedicated wire run AND frame grounds. A wise man once told me the frame ground was the best though. Great post :)


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Hell we can play who's on first with this one...

It comes down to the path back to the battery.  If someone ran a good ground from Alt to body (sanded and bolted) then a  nice ground from there to your battery would be a awesome start.

I think it will be "yes" only because most newer cars have glue in seams and unless you take the time to make sure you have a good path all the way back then best to add one. My jetta was making a nasty ground wine and I know I did my job but got to love the unibody.  I ran a 8ga from the deck to rear and it cleaned it up.

One advantage of older cars/trucks with frames is to go from alt to frame to body to battery and at the rear do frame to body to battery.

Edited by Digital69
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And there is no difference in where you put the fluke probe. like if you could have poked it through the wire insulation? and shown us the probe location in the back? I know you explained it very well and I like this video, These are only thoughts I have and have made my mind up on just doing one of each on my next build.

I understand if we can save a buck we should but how would I ever know the limit of this? Is it like you guys said up to about a 3k rms setup? anything higher than that the the direct ground run in1/0 is necessary?

Thanks for any and all advice. :drink40:

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Like I point out above, the chassis of this Altima would be more than adequate as a return path for anyone with a system of about 4,000 Watts RMS or less that played music. In this Altima, Juan used Rockford Fosgate distribution blocks in the rear for both his power and ground connections to his three amplifiers (a single T1500-1bd and (2) T600-2). His main ground wire from the ground distribution block was about five feet long, is 1/0 AWG full spec OFC, and it is connected solidly to the sheet metal under the rear of the seat bottom via an 8mm threaded boss into a thick part of the metal. The CE Auto Electric Big 3 Kit has 1/0 AWG full spec OFC grounds for the alt and battery that connect to the front frame rail of the chassis, etc. His ground cable was a factor in the chassis measurement. When we substituted the 15' run of 1/0 AWG OFC, we disconnected his cable from the ground distribution block and connected the new run of 1/0 AWG there. In both cases, the DMM probe running to the rear was connected to the ground distribution block, so that we could measure only the voltage drop of the chassis or cable and not other wiring or connections, all of which will conspire to reduce voltage further.

A general rule of thumb is that to maximize the performance of an electrical circuit, it is ideal to keep voltage drops to below 3%. 3% of 12 Volts is 360 mV, so 360mV would be "acceptable" for voltage drop across the entire circuit at 12 volts (430mV would be acceptable at 14.4 Volts). This would also include the drop across the positive cable, fuse holder, fuse, etc. Test tones require double the current as does the most bass heavy music (on average).

As the results clearly show, it would take two runs of full specification 1/0 AWG OFC to improve on the chassis in this particular vehicle - at what point is that even necessary is the big question. Given that we had exceeded the output capability of the Altima's charging system (stock alt) in this video, it would be difficult to say with great certainty how much power we could have in this particular vehicle BEFORE the voltage drop through the chassis becomes a limiting factor.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the D'Amore amp dyno loads an amplifier like no speaker ever could and it does so continuously, which was perfect for capturing the results we did in this video. The load a speaker places on an amplifier is based on many variables and it changes all the time.

So, if you have a similar vehicle with a 4,000 watt or smaller system that you play music with, you use our Big 3 Kit and install it per our recommendations, ground your amplifiers properly in the rear, the chassis is NOT a limiting factor.

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Very informative! Would be interested to see how using both the chassis and wire runs would perform.

Edit - talk about getting ninja'd!

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Maybe I missed it but, what about a system OVER 4k?

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I have a pos and neg run of OFC 1/0 to my rear battery as well as a short ~1' ground from the rear batt to the chassis, I'm off work tomorrow so i might start disconnecting wires and do some testing..

I'll post my results when I'm done!

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