What is a grounding kit exactly?..

 

short answer, if you do the big three

Battery to ground with a gigantic new copper line
batter negative to alternator also full copper
and block to ground

you end up with less radio noise, and 'possibly' better audio quality.

for the g35, SEAN went nuts and also grounded off the manifold, other ground clusters, the tranny casing and some of the intake parts and found it improved transmission and idle characteristics.

if you have a older car, or a car with negative grounds or poorly designed oem flow, a kit can help some things. however overall the effect can be imperceptible to minor at best unless you have some serious issues already (stalling, stuttering from breaks in the negative lines) .

most cars do not need this unless you are going all in on a build and doing a full ecu replacement, or engine swap and will have it gutted already.

the older g35 cars, seem to benefit from one more than others in the older automatics. (at least in MY case)

 

Post install follow-up.

After my last post to *now*, the TCU has adapted. the shifts are not longer as crisp and overall now feels pretty much the same as before this mod.

After observing this I removed all but (1) battery to new ground with much lager 2-gauge (2) engine ground cluster to strut.. kept the slightly improved dashboard brightness. did not effect anything else.

Final Verdict : meh, TCU mod not useful. removed.

as always this is the results on my rig, and not to be gosepl .. ymmv..

 

You dont happen to have a picture of what you did on yours did you? I am looking to do this to a 2003 and cant seem to find a "guide" on it.

Thanks!

 

Did a grounding kit on my first Accord (1990) and other than slightly brighter lights (inside and out) at idle, didn't really notice anything. But my car had also spent its entire life in Texas so no rust. I'd imagine those who have some chassis/engine bay rust would benefit more from cleaning the grounding areas and running bigger wiring. But on a car with no rust, not going to get much.

 

I am looking at wire to make my own grounding kit. Is there a difference between using pure copper wire and CCA wire (basically copper coated aluminum from what I gather). The price difference is quite a bit, but I don't want to cheap out if it won't work as well (or well enough, for that matter).

Thanks!

 

Aluminum is lighter and easier to work with, but it doesn't conduct nearly as well as copper.
Not sure what your budget is, but these are what I got to make one:

 

Yeah, I don't want to cheap out and regret it. I found a similar listing, and I think this is what I'll go with:

4 AWG wire, heat shrink, and connectors

TechFlex Clean Cut

Maybe this will help others in Canada looking to make a grounding kit. I'm starting out with this and clear side markers, and I might wait until spring to do the revup airbox and Z tube.

 

AL or CU conduct electricity exactly the same, you just have to upsize AL. So if you planned on using 4AWG CU you would need to upsize to 2AWG AL.

The difference mostly lies in cost, however for automotive applications where everything is bouncing around you typically want to avoid AL wire which is more prone to stressing and breaking at connectors.

The most important part of buying wire for automotive use is to get the CORRECT INSULATION, the rubber part over the conductor. You want to buy either SXL or GPT wire. For a grounding kit I would just get GPT wire because it's less expensive, SXL wire is mostly for building track-only cars in situations where you're dealing with a lot of extra heat. EPDM (welding wire) will work fine though, especially for something like a bonding kit.

Be sure to apply a thin layer of electrical anti-oxidation grease to the wire before you crimp/shrink the lugs on. You will also need a crimper which for a grounding kit you could just get by with using a bench vise to tightly squeeze the lug onto the wire, then use a center punch to stake it once or twice. For anything that's current-carrying though you will DEFINITELY want to use the proper crimper.