right now it is grounded to the front of my drivers side head. the rear of the passengers side head is grounded to the chassis at the rear, just above it. this is all in 4 gauge, i might make it 0/1 gauge.

ive been getting some noise in my stereo, and i think its related to the battery being grounded to the motor. do i just take the negative battery terminal wire to drivers head, ground that to some bare metal, maybe up where the wiper fluid resevoir goes (i took mine out)

is that a good spot to ground it, or is there better?

 

The battery should have 2 ground points, one at the engine, and the other on the body. The ground wire that goes to the engine block should be the same size as the power feed wire for the starter. The ground that goes to the body should be at least an 8 gauge wire unless you have an aftermarket amplifier in which case you would want to have it be the same size as your power wire. The noise that you are getting in your stereo could be due to different things. Do you have an aftermarket stereo system? If so, are the RCA cables running next to or near the main amplifier power wire? It could be inducing power into the RCA signal. The noise that you hear, is it a whining sound? Does it get louder as you increase the engne RPM's? You might also want to try adding a ground wire from the alternator casing to the engine block and see if that helps at all.

 

so if i run 0/1 gauge wire to the back, i dont want to have my underhood wiring any smaller than that?
why does the ground to the engine block need to be the same size as the starter power wire? its alright to be bigger right?
my rcas are on the passenger side of the car, the power is on the drivers.
yes, i have a bit of an aftermarket stereo. (think 0/1 gauge, 200 amp alternator, optima yellow top 31)
what id like to do is run 0/1 gauge straight from the negative battery terminal to the back, and split it into 4 gauge there for my amps, but i dont think i can hide 2 0/1 gauge wires, or even 2 gauge. right now its just one 4 gauge.
could you explain how grounding the alternator would help? how is the alternator grounded, the only wire i saw on the back was the power wire, and the harness.
is there another post to ground the casing?

 

Well, ground wire size become cumulative after a whiile. You see, conventional electron theory states that power flows from negative to positive to help keep things simple. In actuality, power comes from the negative side not the positive. The ground from the engine block to the battery has to be the same size as the starter power feed wire because the WHOLE circuit has to be able to handle the complete current demand on that particular system. If you only ran a 16 gauge wire as your engne ground, you probably wouldn't even be able to start the car because the ground side could not carry the load placed on it You would probably smoke the ground wire. For your system you would not have to run a 1/0 gauge ground wire from the battery to the back of the car. All you would have to go is ADD that extra 1/0 wire from the battery negative to the body ground point up front. Then you can just ground your amps/caps/eq's/ etc. to the body in the back of the car. If you had 3 amps you could use 4 gauge grounds on all of them as long as the main battery ground can support it. See how it becomes cumulative? I use that style setup in my other car(pontiac sunbird). The alternator is grounded by being bolted tothe engine itself. That alone acts as its ground. I was only saying that becuase if you run your power wire anywhere near the alternator, you can induce RFI(radio frequency interference) into any electrical component. Sometimes, electricity can induce itself in the altenator circuit, and by adding the additional ground from the cas to the block can get rid of some of the extraneous noise.

 

oh well my battery terminal will be here tomorrow, so i can put in the yellow top and run the 0/1 gauge. first i'm going to try grounding the battery in 0/1 gauge to the body, see if i get a good enough ground that way, if not i'm going to run it clear from the negative terminal to the back of the car.
im having trouble finding a good ground spot though. i drilled a hole in the fender, over by where the window washer fluid resevoir was, but hidden. the hole came out on the other side, pointing at my wheel. can i put a nut and bolt here, or will the undercoating on the outside part where the nut will be sitting interfere with the ground? any other ideas for a good ground spot near the front of the drivers side?

 

95% of the time it's due to old OEM or cheap replacement plug wires that have poor RFI (radio frequency interference) supression.

If the batt. ground to block, block to chassis plus, batt. to chassis is known to be good (clean and using di-electric grease for good contact), try investing in some worthwhile plug wires. MSD and Accel 8.8's both work well for RFI supression.

Just my opinion though...

 

im using msd super conductor 8.5's. check out my sig

 

What I am trying to expain to you is that BEFORE you add any wiring associated with your aftermarket stereo equpment you need to have those 2 grounds from the battery first. One goes to the chassis, and the other to the engine block. Then, after those are in place you ADD your second ground wire from the battery to the chassis up front. The noise that you are having in your stereo can be many things like....

1. Running your main power wire too close to the alternator.

2. Running your RCA cables too close to the power wire.

3. Improper sized wiring for the grounds and/or improper grounding points.

4. Ground loop problems on either the head unit pre amp output section, amplifer signal input, etc.

From what I have heard, running a ground wire from the battery to the rear of the car to ground amplifers was not a good idea. Yes it does provide the path for ground, but it is sharing the same ground for both the engie and chassis sides. If I'm not mistaken, grunding amplifiers to an engine ground will induce noise due to things like the distributor, spark plug wires, ECM, and toher electronic components. The best way is to ISOLATE all amps to the chassis ground.