Our pal Todd Ryden, sent us this quick tech tip last week, along with a great new kit from Painless Performance that gives you all the grounds and fasteners you need to make sure your car or truck has the proper ground connections that are required with all the electronics on your ride. And don’t tell us you only have a couple things on your car because it’s a race car and doesn’t need anything else, cause your full of it. Ask any good EFI tuner or race electronics guy and they’ll tell you the number one screw up is chassis and body grounds. Call MSD, Holley, or FAST and ask them what the number one mistake people make is during installation of electronics. Grounds is the answer.
Words and Photos by Todd Ryden, InGear Media, and Painless Performance.
Painless Performance's 40140 Ground Strap Kit includes all you see here. It's cheap insurance for less than $60 at Summit.
Don’t forget the Grounds – Painless Performance 40140 Ground Strap Kit
These days, having a complete ground system on your car has never been more important. Just look at the number of accessories that are soaking up positive juice and searching for a route to ground to start all over again. Most street cars have at least a couple of the following electronic components; cooling fan(s), fuel pump, HIDs, thumping stereo, AC, EFI, air suspension, and on and on.
Having the proper battery and alternator to support everything is imperative, but if you don’t have good grounds, you’re going to be S-O-L no matter what size alternator you have. To ensure that your entire vehicle has proper grounds, Painless Performance offers a new Ground Strap Kit as a solution.
The simple little kit includes four ground straps that are all terminated and ready to be installed. One 14-inch 1/0 gauge to ground the engine to the frame and three 11-inch 10-gauge straps to ground the core support, the body or bed to the frame. Self tapping screws are also supplied for the smaller straps.
We used the 1/0 gauge strap to connect the engine block to the chassis (and connected the battery negative to that spot as well). Be sure to scrap off any corrosion or paint to achieve good metal-to-metal contact. Next we moved under the dash to connect another from the dash itself to the firewall. Another smaller strap was used to tie the rear tail panel to the chassis and the core support to the chassis as well. We’re grounded now.
Todd Ryden
A complete ground circuit requires proper ground straps to connect the body, core support, engine and more to the frame. Painless offers a new Body Ground Kit, PN 40140.
When I did my LT1 swap in a 2nd gen Camaro, grounds were high on my must do list. Block to frame, block to firewall (x2), battery negative to frame, alternator case to frame, PCM case to frame. And I make part of my oil change visual inspection looking for corrosion ond fastener torque.
buddy had all kinds of electrical problems,poor starting bad charging etc etc. finally figured it out when his shifter cable stopped working, it was acting like the ground and finally melted.
I had to resort to installing a groundstrap from the battery to the front bumper of my ’67 Chrysler once because the turnsignals didn’t work anymore as they should.
The bumper had lost it’s ground with the car.
A slight issue of ‘metal-oxidation’ could have been the issue here perhaps…
I bought a 33 Ford pickup that was a driver but still in primer. Took it out for a spin one night and everytime you would brake to a stop the headlamps would go out. Found battery and charging syst was grounded to engine but not to the frame. Frame/body was getting ground through engine mounts I am guessing. When stopping, engine would move forward enough to loose the chassis ground. I added grounds to frame and body and all was well.