i relocated the battery to the trunk for the **** of it and now the car has trouble turning on. have to use a jumper every time. can someone tell me what i did wrong.

basically i took a + 4 guage wire from the starter to the trunk.
4 guage to chassi
and fuse box to starter.

 

check your terminals

 

could be your grounds i had a second battery in mine for a while and it wouldn't charge ...turns out the area where i grounded it had some surface rust build up ...cleaned that and it worked perfectly

 

Check your grounds, I'd say 99% of the time that's the problem. 4 gauge should be fine in my opinion but again I hate electrical.

Clean the grounds, make sure it's not on a piece of painted metal otherwise it'll not work well.

 

i check the ground and there was some paint on it.
but i made a new ground, made sure there was nothing but bare metal, and still nothing.

my dad says i have to run another ground cable all the way to the engine bay.. do i really have to do that??

 

No.

 

so any other ideas as to what it could be?

 

^^^ what he said. Do not run a long ground. Running a long ground will add excessive/unnecessary resistance to the circuit. Running multiple ground cables from the battery to the chassis will create a ground loop.

1. Check that the battery has full charge
2. Make sure that the battery is being grounded properly to a structural piece of the chassis (like the rear frame rail) and that you shave the paint away to make a good connection.
3. Make sure that the engine/transmission is grounded to the chassis frame rail. (4ga. wire will be fine.)
4. report back with pics of these cables.

 

sounds like you are short on current. this usually stems from bad connections like stated previously, or shitty power wire. not all 4 gauge is not created equal. try to start the car and then see if the wire gets hot. ive seen 0 gauge that isnt up to the task of a true fine stranded 4 gauge. welding cable is best IMO...
If you want to really do it correctly. get a decent quality 1/0 welding cable. starter will spin much faster ill bet.

 

i added a 60 amp fuse and it burnt after trying to start the car.
ill be back with some pics of the grounds

 

engine to chassis


tranny to chassis

starter to battery / fuse box

battery

battery to chassis

 

All of that looks okay for the most part.

Perhaps you could describe the problem in more detail. (ie: the starter cranks weak and then just does the click-click-click that is symptomatic of a weak battery/not enough amperage)

If you have a multimeter, that will help a lot.
Check the voltage at the starter wire (should be 12 volts)
Then with the meter connected, crank the car and see if the voltage drops while cranking.

Then perform the same test with the jumper battery connected and note the voltage

If you have another length of 4ga. cable, run an additional length from the positive battery terminal to the starter. (don't waste time running it neatly, as this is just a test.) This will "simulate" running a larger cable and confirm whether or not a larger power cable will help.

 

i tried all that already. it was at 12.31 at first. and it started up fine but it was real weak. you could hear it crank like 3-4 times over a ~5 sec period. let the car run for about 10 min. the battery now read 13.81. turned off the car. let it sit for maybe 20 min. tried to start it again. and all you hear is 1 or 2 very weak cranks. then nothing. no lights come on or the little noise that tells you the door is open. at this point the battery reads from ~5-8 volts. i try a jumper but it just drains the battery from the jumper and nothing happens. i also measured from the positive terminal to the ground on the picture and it read the same thing, meaning i have a good ground... right?.

 

are you sure you have a good battery?

 

agreed^^^

A good 12v battery should always read above 12v. Even a weak battery that does not have enough amperage to turn over the starter can still read 12v. The fact that yours reads so low, points to a bad battery (or one that needs to be charged). Then you said that if you jump it, it starts up fine. This also points to a weak battery. Try swapping the battery with another battery that you know is good.

I want to rule out the poor ground possibility.....the grounding location looks good, on the frame rail with the paint shaved away etc. But it might be how the ground is attached. Is that 10mm bolt going into factory threads or just drilled a hole and pressure fit in there?

try measuring voltage directly @ battery terminals. = ____.___V
then try measuring voltage from positive battery terminal and ground the other lead directly to the frame rail. = _____.___V
Then go to under hood and measure voltage from + wire on starter to front frame rail ground = ______.____V

(You should see none or very small voltage drop across these tests.)

 

did you use grommets where the cable goes through the firewall?

 

grommets: check
battery: new battery

ill check all the voltages in a bit.
and the ground that is there is just a drilled hole by me and the bolt is pressured in there.

 

I am new here, but am pretty good with electrical To me, it looks like your battery terminals and crimp connections are a huge issue here. Those battery terminals you have are considered emergency terminals and not a proper permanent solution. They allow a lot of corrosion and high resistance, and should be replaced with a sealed solder-on or bolt/eyelet style. Also, with your crimp connections, they have way too much insulation stripped off and have absolutely no adhesive-lined heatshrink tubing to seal out moisture.

I would remove that ugly looking chassis to valve cover wire immediately; It is useless. I would then make a larger cable like 2AWG and connect the engine block to the strut tower, making a much better ground return path. The ring terminals on the starter + should have the yellow plastic cut off, and adhesive lined heatshrink tubing around them instead. If you are doing crimp connections, they need to be TIGHT! Finally, replace the battery terminal ends with solder-on ends.

 

DO NOT REMOVE THE GROUND FROM THE VALVE COVER. It prevents aluminum heads from rotting internally. If anything, add another to a different spot on the head. (that wont fix the starting problem though)

 

No one brought up the signal wire the connects to the starter. It is a small black or black with white stripe blade type connection wire. Make sure this is properly connected.

 

The engine is grounded through the cylinder head to the frame from the 2AWG wire he would be installing. Honda used a cheap piece of 12AWG wire and this is not more efficient then the upgraded 2AWG. You do not need to keep this tiny strand of brown **** wire if you are using 2AWG from the cylinder head to the frame.

Their are many, many millions of aluminum headed vehicles on the road and none of them have a 12AWG ground wire from the valve cover to the chassis, except Hondas cheap ground system they used on these EF's to save money instead of using larger gauge wiring. Just sayin...

 

the head should be grounded as well as the block

 

That is definitely a potential problem. You can ground it properly like in the video below, or run your ground cable to a strong factory bolt. (For testing purposes you can try the rear shock tower bolt, the seat mounting bolts or something strong like that.)

Here is what you should do on the frame rail area where you already scraped the paint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVyLDvRAzds

The way it is now has a very small contact area (thin sheet metal touching very small amount of fine threads and relies on a very small part of sheet metal to complete the ground circuit. Since it is pressure fit, It probably isn't as tight as you think.



You should use a "ground terminal" and/or use "self tapping screws" to mount the terminal ring directly to the frame rail which will get you much better results.

 

What is your running Voltage ???

 

ok. so today i tested all my connections with a volt meter.

+ and - battery terminals read 11.16
+ and ground read 11.15
starter and ground read 11.14
fuse box and ground read 11.12

i tried again to start the car and it was weak, did not turn on.
got my jumper, and again it was weak, but it started after a few sec.

let it run for a little. checked the volts on the battery at this point. it read 13.15
turned it off, right away tried starting it back up without the jumper, and it failed.

put jumper back on. started it. and this time i added a 8 gauge wire from + to fuse box.
turned the car off, right away tried starting it without jumper. and it started right up.

turned the car off again, waited a couple min. tried again. and again it was very weak, and it didnt start.

next im gonna try what gringo7718 said see if it turns over. but if that doesnt work, what should i try next?