Upgrading Grounding Wires

[Stig]

How is this exactly done? do you just go and replace your grounding wires with thicker gauge cables or is there a kit with wires you can actually buy?

[riruiz_88]

firstly why do you want to do this? and to a FD, why? its practically still new.

but yeh thats what is consists of. dunno if you can buy kits for all ground in the car, but you can get engine bay earth kits. search around for them

[Stig]

in the process of upgrading the sound system and there are extra power cable to the amps etc so i might as well upgrade the grounding wires to the battery to provide adequate current flow instead of a bottle neck

[riruiz_88]

in that case, it shouldnt be needed to upgrade your ground cable at the battery. the amps will have there own ground cable, so the power will be going through this rather than the ground at the battery.
what you should be worrying about is what size cable you will be using to power your amps. to skimmy cable will result in over currents, and could cause insulation break down or over heating the amp. what every size power cable you get, the ground must be the same size.

[zeus_civic]

Depends how much current your amps draw then you can work out how thick your wires need to be. If you have money, you can have extra earth points going from the battery's negative terminal to the chassis. Usually multiple runs of 4 gauge or few 2 gauge wires should be fine.

But if you are tight on money, then the so called "Big 3" would be the most effective way to upgrade your electrical system.
First one would be to upgrade the battery(negative) to chassis ground.
2nd one would be from chassis to your engine block.
3rd one would be from your alternator to your battery(positive).
Use minimum of 4 gauge (2 gauge preferred) for the cables. If your amps are not drawing massive currents usually 4 gauge should be sufficient.

[Stig]

"extra earth points going from the battery's negative terminal to the chassis"

yeah that was pretty much what i was planning to do, was just confirming if i could use ordinary power cables, guess i could :)

[riruiz_88]

in my opinion, this is not needed. would only start to think about this if you were to run your car as a pure SPL car.

[mrpsi]

you can use ordinary power cable as ground. Make sure all your grounds are the same size as your power cables.

Also i would run a ground at your batterey.

Make sure you ground has good contact with the chasis (no paint)

*Plz rep me :)

[Fr3aKi3]

It's pretty easy to make you're own kit. I did using some 0awg and 4awg cables and a distro block.

Removed factory ground and replaced it with a 0awg.
Added another 0awg but then ran it into a distribution block which split into four 4awg outlets and grounded to various places in the engine bay.

You don't have to have a competition car to benefit from having extra grounding points. I'm running 2 amps in my atm, a 4 channel and a monoblock and I don't have a problem with lights dimming unless i turn it up loud enough for it to be uncomfortable.

[Stig]

well i have a 1x1000w rms and a 4x150w rms amp so it totals to 1600w rms, so upgrading some grounding wires to the battery would be beneficial if you know what i mean riruiz