But no proof yet, or any sort of technical backing offered up by someone with the right technical experience (electrical engineer) and unbiased POV

The tcu is digital anyway, and electrical signal travels at speed of light...so it doesn't make logically sense that a ground cable makes any difference here.

Plus....we are ignoring the fact that you aren't changing any of the wiring sizes of any of the sensors. They carry ground and power through body harness wiring, so the resistance values though the 12, 14 and 16 gauge wire does not improve. Doesn't matter if you have a 1/0 size cable down stream. If you build a 10-lane highway, you won't improve the flow of traffic if it all narrows down to a 2-lane road before the final destination.

As of right now, the only real claim to proof has been "it feels like it did something" and I've heard the same thing said about the Tornado. The dyno claims I am skeptical about. I've personally witnessed my own car gain 3-4 hp on a dyno just because it cooled off for an hour while I messed around on a friends car. Put a bag of ice on the intake and cool it off for a few mins and you'll see that as well. So it's possible for the engine intake to cool while a kit is being installed and when the next run is made, the air passes through a cooler manifold creating more power.

I'm not trying to argue that vehicle grounding is not key, but I believe the grounding kits are overkill. Looking at pictures online, I notice 2 or three wires are used tom ground the intake manifold to the valve cover. What does this accomplish? Any sensors on the engine are electrically isolated from the engine anyway save for a temp sensor and the spark plugs. Like I suggested before, a good check would be to measure resistance from spark plugs to battery neg before and after the install.

If you want tp make sure your car is prooperly grounded, look at the oem wiring first. Verify you have good clean, unbroken connections from:

-alt power wire to electrical (+) power distribution
-batt neg to chassis
-batt neg to engine block
-engine block to chassis

-additionally verify all vehicle chassis grounds and clean and tight

That's pretty much all you need. If you can verify that these connections are good, then I would wager that grounding kits will offer no gains over it.

And if any of you want cables, search eBay. You can find cable setups for 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of commericial grounding kits.

Another observation...I've never even heard of grounding kits until joining these boards. Seems they are popular on g35/350z and other imports. On the domestic side of things....most guys have never heard of them either. Seems like it's more of an import "trend" if anything to me.

400 people have bought dumber things and given positive reviews, im not going to be the 401st person to belive that all the people before me were bright enough i should follow them.

I am asking for them to tell me why i should buy thier product instead of making one of my own for a tiny fraction of the price. Since when is it too much for me to ask of a seller, to ask them to try to "sell" me thier product?

^ for a grounding kit if you can make it your self do it. If you are lazy just buy it.

If you buy "SxExCx" grounding kit you get his instructions and his grounding points which apparently "work" I think other wise but thats up to you.

I was one of those Lazy people but i will be installing it myself though.

I can get decent grounding points from any install DIY for one of these kits, I'm just not seeing the value add here. Guess I need to get lazyy

I think this is the main benefit.

Not too much at all, I perhaps misunderstood your intent when you asked 'why 8-10 wires' -- I think that's their intellectual property and a large part of the value of the kit.

In my time on Driver I haven't seen a DIY showing the grounding points.

AWG #8 is hardly big enough to be worth installing. Get some nice stout #2 or even #0 welding cables. They are both heavy enough to make a difference, and flexible enough to survive the high-vibration environment of an engine bay.

I've gone over this in a previous post. No need for overkill. It's not going to provide any benefits. It'll be deeper on your pockets though.

IMO, the amount of wires is a sales gimmick. Why? The more wires you have, means you have an extra wire that will help, supposedly, meaning that kit is better.

Which brings us back to the question...."How?"


And i say this in the attempt of trying to have a nice educated discussion regarding vehicle grounding.

But, how does a grounding kit which mostly focuses on grounding various points of the engine together promote better throttle response and shifting? If this is really true, you could then ask the question "Why did it improve?" Did i improve the grounding connection, or did i simply band-aid a failing OEM electrical connection? Some of the cars these kits are going on are 7-8 years old. Lots of time for corrosion of the connections to occur.

I guess an analogy would be if your spark plugs are worn out, and you put fancy aftermarket plugs on and gain power. Well, did you gain power because of the new plugs...or because the old ones were worn out?

SO, any theory as to why throttle response and shifting would improve? The electrical controls of the engine and trans ground through small gauge wire. I'm not sure of the size, but they look like 14 or 16 gauge wiring on the engine. These tie back to the ECU/TCU which is mostly digital. More than likely these are shielded, to protect against electrical noise, which grounding does not help. SO what exactly is done to provide better response from a digital control unit?

Perhaps you could say that improving the ground from block to chassis improved firing of the spark plugs? That would in theory provide better throttle response due to a "healthier" ignition. But would it require 10 wires? Or just simply 1 good solid ground?

The transmission is bolted to the engine. They are electrically one unit and i would bet if resistance is measured between block and transmission, you would find it very low. So, if you have a good engine block ground, there is no need to ground the transmission, because electrically it should all be at the same potential


Bingo. To use your statement, more is better right? If you have more grounds, electricity must flow better right? Sounds fancy and technical, right? But as mentioned before, too much grounding creates what is know as "grounding loops" which are not good. It's basucally when you ground various points to grounds with different potential. Treat grounding like water, you always want it to flow to the lowest point (ie largest grounding potential), so when you have something like the engine block grounded to the chassis, but then you run a random ground from the intake to a part with not so great of a connection to chassis ground, you create a ground loop, which creates noise and electrical interference. In other words it can hurt your digital ECU/TCU more than help it.

The engine is all bolted together, therefor it should all be of the same potential. When you bolt an aluminum head, to a block, with a metal head bolt, you create a pretty good ground (unless they are all corroded to hell) So the idea of adding more ground wires from intake, to a valve cover, to the timing cover may possibly create ground loops by creating multiple paths for current to ground. And like said before...there really shouldn't be any current in your manifold or timing cover...so why ground it..again?


But like i said before, i'm not advocating against proper vehicle grounding, but the fact that these multi-wire kits just seem redundant. The reason nobody has seen a DIY for grounding points is simply because your intake manifold is not a grounding point. It's conencted to ground by simply being part of the engine, but wiring it up electrically to the battery bypassing the OEM engine ground creates a ground loop and potential electrical noise.


Now, some of my thoeries could be wrong. I'm an ME not an EE, so i could be overlooking things. But i'm trying to engage more of a technical discussion as to "why"

I agree, something like 1/0 is just overkill. The alternator doesn't even output enough amps to fully utilize wiring of that size.

#2 will carry 200A of current in runs of under 10 feet. That's a lot of current

I personally would stick to #4. It's good for 130A in runs of under 10 feet. I beleive the G35 alt is rated for 130A? Of course that is at max output which it usually never does. So there's really no point in having your ground wires be oversized compared to the alternator power wire? Does anyone know what size the alt power wire is? It's prob a #4, but i wouldn't be surprised if it's a #6 wire. #6 is good to about 80A

#8 wire is rated to about 40A

This may help; it comes closest to an explanation that I've seen, though it doesn't go into particular engineering detail.

http://www.groundinggear.com/Groundi...%AE%20FAQs.htm

There is also some feedback from EE's in the Feedback section.

I read through it. To be quote honest, there are many points i could disagree with. Keep in mind, this is information written by a vendor's marketing team to sell a product, so statment claims about higher quality copper, and lugs and eliminating noise sound fancy, but they just aren't convincing to me. I know i'm biased, but i'm keeping an open mind to any sort of technical arguement for the cables.


So, just to prove how open of a mind i have, listen to this. Tonight, after my ride home, i popped my hood in an attempt to find factory ground points. Since it was dark, i couldn't really trace down some of the cables, but one that was easily seen was the engine to chassis ground. It's located on the passenger side of the engine right behind the coolant bottle. It grounds to the front frame rail, and to the accessory bracket. To be honest, i really wasn't too thrilled with it grounding to the accessory bracket. I would feel more confident in it if it was bolted to a head or to the actual engine block. This is the path electricity would take when your plugs fire...traveling through the head, block, over to the accessory bracket and into the frame. Of course, no way to tell if it would make a difference bolted to the block instead without testing. Oh...and the cable ends were oxidized pretty well. I might take the cable off and clean it up a tad. Looks to be of adequate size, either a #4 or #2, and copper wire.

Need a sunny day to look through the rest of the bay for major grounds, but that's one of the factory ground points...and i think it could be better to be honest

I do not know much about the electrical systems in these cars, but I have worked with and around digital and analog signals for the better part of 14 years. I believe the improvement experienced is in the analog portion (DC voltage).
Like your analogy about the 10 lane highway narrowing to 2 lanes, think of it in reverse. Now correct me if im wrong, the ECU/TCU puts out a digital signal (10 lane highway) and recieves an "analog" signal on the input (2 lane highway). If you increase the 2 lane highway to 3 lanes the traffic will get from point A to point B faster. Esentially the signal to shift up/down can potentially be recieved faster. The digital signal wont travel faster, but it can be initiated sooner.

Now I am not one to add a part and claim a world of difference (unless it's a turbo). I bought a plenum spacer because of all the hype about being the best bang for the buck (which it probably is) but I could easily remove it and not miss it, I just dont want to take the effort to do so. With that said, I have noticed a change in the shifting of my 5AT in manual mode. The delay from when I say shift and it actually shifts has decreased.
Why is that? I dont know, I am with you on this. Is it due to a poor or coroded grounding on the engine/transmission, has the grounding been improved over the fully functioning factory grounding? Its tought to say. For all I know maybe by me regrounding I have improved the shifting from what I knew to what it should have been, so essentially it shifts like it did from the factory again. I havent owned the car since it was new so I cant say. Maybe I did a "tune-up" on my electrical system.

I dont buy that grounding kits make power. Maybe they restore some lost power by improving the strength of the spark and creating a more complete combustion, but that IMO is .02hp at best.

Like I said I only have speculation, no real proof. I am happy with the way my car drives and shifts now, so my goal has been accomplished.

This made me LOL. AFAIK the marketing team is also the production line is also the shipping department is also the financial team -- Gord. And the feedback section was written by customers, many of them from this site and several were admitted skeptics.

But good for you for reading it and keeping an open mind. TBH I don't know if anything can convince the skeptics except for them to try it themselves. I personally don't know if it helps or not either, but so far there's a preponderance of 'for' evidence.

We are probably not going to see the end of these debates anyway for some time. This thread will be forgotten and in a month, a new one will appear.

Either way, after beating it up for 4 days, kinda think it's time to bow out and let it die.