I have a little concern about a situation I have. I have a 90 crx just recently swap in a b16a complete motor with bunch of itr internals. The crx starts up fine, no codes appears, everything is good to go.

My question is, I did not ground the valve cover to the chassis . . but it still start up fine, drives fine..

so is that wire suppose to be grounded somewhere? (It's the ground that connects to the lower right of valve cover and back to the chassis near the driver side headlights)

In the picture it's not grounded, never has been after the swap but starts up fine. Just a little concern. any inputs?





Modified by vr4twinturbo at 5:54 PM 10/26/2006

 

the grounds were put there for a reason. why would you even ask if it is ok to NOT have it grounded. if the honda engineers didnt think it needed to be grounded, do ya think they would have out that there for no reason? come on now, think before you ask a question with something as simple as this.

 

^^^ and either way, the more the better. Put that ground back and then run a ground from the tranny and intake manifold to the chasis(just a suggestion).

 

i agree, while it will run ok and everything, it was put there for a reason, it wouldnt hurt to go ahead and do it

 

You really can't "over-ground" it. Just add the stock ones where they should be.

 

Okay I just needed to make sure that there wasn't too many ground. Cause a shop helped me in doing the swap and I'm not sure if they grounded it to another part which then left that ground not grounded so I was just asking.

I always thought too many ground will be a problem.. so just had to ask.

I will ground it for your sake! Everyone's happy.

 

since im bored im going to get really technical with this one. this is way more information then needed, but too bad.

DC power in the car makes a loop from the positive to the negative terminal on the battery. The enemy of the ground side of any circuit is what is known as resistence. You can write an entire book on resistence but essentially resistence present on a ground will shorten the life of whatevers hooked up to it.

a good example of this is an amplifier for a speakers, poorly grounded it will work, but if there is great resistence on the ground the amp will not last as long as it should as it stresses the internals beyond specification.

Now back to the case in point, your engine. The ground you skipped is from the valve cover to the radiator support im assuming. But as you noticed, the car starts up fine without this. that is because everything on the engine block recives its ground from the engine, the entire block and tranny is "grounded". so after the various sensors and electrical items finish using their energy and the power begins its return to ground, and eventuially the negative terminal of the battery, itdesperately looks for the shortest path possible back to the chassis and then the neg terminal of the battery.

so, essentially, honda thought it was a good idea to ground the valve cover for good measure, and so should you, to give your enignes electrical devices the best possible return path to your battery, although, as you've now learned, they can all just travel down the ground to the tranny housing, OR the thermostat ground.

and you can just ask anyone whos done an engine swap and had it not start how important that thermostat ground is if you forget to hook it up.

anyway, thats my .02

 

i run 2 grounds off the back of my block. that way it looks clean and i know it is properly grounded.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by doublethink &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">DC power in the car makes a loop from the positive to the negative terminal on the battery. </TD></TR></TABLE>

I thought in dc it was from the neg and returns to the pos, the opposite of what you said

 

nah power always goes positive to negative

 

electrons actually flow from the negative terminal to the positive one. they have a negative charge, hence a larger number of them starting on the negative side. its sort of irrelevant, as long as you use the same direction in all of your references to it.

 

exactly old fords were posative ground

 

I had an intermittent hesitation from 1.5k-2.5k rpm
then I remembered that I didn't put the valve cover ground back on after I last went into the engine.

replaced teh ground strap and now the car drives like butter

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nutz4cycling &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">electrons actually flow from the negative terminal to the positive one. they have a negative charge, hence a larger number of them starting on the negative side. its sort of irrelevant, as long as you use the same direction in all of your references to it.</TD></TR></TABLE>

i suppose on a molecular level this is true, but whatever it takes to get people to make good grounds is all that matters.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by doublethink &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i suppose on a molecular level this is true, but whatever it takes to get people to make good grounds is all that matters.</TD></TR></TABLE>

yup

 

im going to do ground wires this weekend. since the current is trying to make its way back to the battery, should i run the ground wires to the negative terminal of the battery or daisy chain or just ground to different parts of the engine bay? Im planning on doing the valve cover, intake manifold, thermostat, transmission, and probably block one too. anyone have a close up pic of the thermostat ground point? last time i checked, i could not find the ground when i was looking under the hood. i read the archive and recent posts regarding it aready

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nutz4cycling &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">electrons actually flow from the negative terminal to the positive one. they have a negative charge, hence a larger number of them starting on the negative side. its sort of irrelevant, as long as you use the same direction in all of your references to it.</TD></TR></TABLE>

true

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by veritasaequatis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">nah power always goes positive to negative
</TD></TR></TABLE>

wrong

 

so what if your battery is located in the back and my neg is connected to my strut tower bar/ suspension in the back.. does that mean everything from the front of my car that is grounded working harder because it has to travel all the way to the back of my car to get back to my battery?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by trianglegreg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">so what if your battery is located in the back and my neg is connected to my strut tower bar/ suspension in the back.. does that mean everything from the front of my car that is grounded working harder because it has to travel all the way to the back of my car to get back to my battery?</TD></TR></TABLE>

There is not work being done, the entire car is charged. The resistance is very low since the car is like one big *** piece of wire

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by trianglegreg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">so what if your battery is located in the back and my neg is connected to my strut tower bar/ suspension in the back.. does that mean everything from the front of my car that is grounded working harder because it has to travel all the way to the back of my car to get back to my battery?</TD></TR></TABLE>
No, it doesn't. Your cars shell is made from a steel alloy which is a very good conductor which means electrons flow through it very easily due to its extremely low resistance. Think of it as a bucket of water suspended in the air and you pour water into a chute that travels downward to another bucket, no matter how long that chute is, the water doesn't have to work any harder to get to the same point. If that helps at all.

 

ok one more question... you know how car speakers fade after awhile, they loose their sharpness, they are not as clear. Is this caused by a power resistence over time? Because i always hear about how car speakers loose their sound after awhile, and the people always say to take sound warrenties on speakers so after so many years you can trade them in for new ones because the sound fades.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by digitally_remastered &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">the grounds were put there for a reason. why would you even ask if it is ok to NOT have it grounded. if the honda engineers didnt think it needed to be grounded, do ya think they would have out that there for no reason? come on now, think before you ask a question with something as simple as this.</TD></TR></TABLE>
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