Electrical grounding - finer points...

[Gary - K7GLD]

Started in 03, came back in 04, skipped 05 for a short stint in 06 and now starts 09 one month shy of its 6 year anniversary

YUP - the years go by, but grounding issues just keep rollin' on by... :-laf



Been seeing a few more related issues popping up here and on other boards, sooooooo...

 

[hcole]

Let me say this was coincidental for me. My wipers quit yesterday morning in the rain. I didn't have to have get right to work so I started troubleshooting. I checked fuse, then relay, and then found out I had power to wiper but no ground. Pulled ground lug off and it ohmed +5 ohms. So, I temporarily hooked a ground straight to the battery ground. It worked! So, I used a tap connector from the ground wire on the wiper to the ground at the battery that is attached to the drivers side fender. I started looking in the FSM for the ground lug location (G100) for the wiper and discovered it was located just underneath the drivers side battery. I looked at it (corroded) and it looks like Dodge just mashed about 6-8 16 awg wires together and put them on a stud on the fender. The battery negative is only a foot away from this connection. Looks like another poor design by Dodge engineers.

 

[Dieselnut59]

With electric forklifts and electric pallet jacks, EVERYTHING goes back to battery negative. You have ONE common negative and one common positive connection. All negative wires are generally numbered "13". It is a much better design than this crappy grounding to the chassie crap they do on vehicles. Anytime I add an accessory, it gets a feed from the switched lead or directly to the battery and always directly to battery negative. I have to do it when adding a horn, back up alarm, headlights or strobe light to an electric forklift,so I treat the engine powered things the same way.

 

[Wiredawg]

HCole,



I can certainly share grief about the ground "cluster" under the battery on the driver's side of an '02... a squirrel made a nest there and chewed most of the wires in half... the whole truck was crazy drving to work. I had to take the battery out and solder the leads back together. Had to get rid of the squirrel too... little sucker just wouldn't give up on making the '02 home.



Wiredawg