Over the past Monday, it was my off day and I had nothing much to do. Therefore, I carried on with my long procrastinated project ; Custom Ground Cables :D.
I and a few friends strongly believe that a a 6mm DC cable is already rated at 36A is most suitable for grounding, compared to come aftermarket speaker cables what are widely sold in the market.
However, this is too technical of a spec for us to find for people dumb lke me :), so we opted for welding cables.
Ask yourself this question :
You jump start a car, can your 'speaker/amp' cable do it? Or you use welding cable to do it?
Welding cables are very high in conductivity and lets high amp travels right through from one end to the other. We also have to keep in mind that the length of the cable matters as you try to jump start a car with a 10m long welding cable, you will be unsuccessful.
So, things you will need :
2-3metres of 25mm welding cable
25mm cable lugs
Scissors
Cutters/pliers
Crimpers
Optional :
Solder equipments
Hot glue gun
Trunking
I will be doing a 5-point set as there isn't much personal theory to be applied to how many do we need.
1.We start by measuring the length of the cables needed to connect all parts of the engine to the body and cut them into pieces.
2. Then, we start cutting off the outter rubber insulator of each ends of the cable. You can opt to add some trunking around the cables. You have to do this before you fit the lugs.
3. From there, use a crimper, or plier to fur the cable lugs onto each end of the stripped cable. This may be abit hard. To make things easier, you may want to get a slightly oversized cable lug to fit them on as you dont want excessive 'cable hairs' sticking out of the lugs.
4. This step is optional : You can solder the wires down to the lug. Sorry for the bad workmanship as i do not have a proper solder nor soldering grease to spread the jam evenly. This is (along with the next step) quite important as the cable hairs may or may not break over time.
5. You can also use some hot glue gun to seal up the cable to cable lug joints.
6. Wallah! This is the outcome :
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You are going to have to fit them onto the car. Keep in mind that it is not necessary to connect them all to the negative termila of the battery. Instead, you can bolt them down from the throttle body to absorber mounting nut, ignition coil to absorber mounting nut, air cond compressor/starter motor to body/engine block, and so on.
It would be best if you have a clamp-type ammeter to measure current flow into the ground and try various ways to fit your grounding cable and see which one gives the highest reading.
Sorry I didnt take any pictures after fitting as it was already dark at that time.
Took me about 4-6hours to make the cables and fit everything in as its been quite awhile since i did this.
Credits to Steven aka mxsteven for the welding cables and Zam for the cable trunking :).
Results : Didnt really noticed the improvement in audio quality nor headlamps as I was using HIDs. However, engine was smoother and fuel consumption improved by a bit.
Cheers
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