The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Trouble shooting tip for electrical components

I know this has popped up in several post as the first suggestion when trouble shooting but it is worth mentioning again. My 54 is original. It still needs a lot of work. There is still a lot of hidden rust. As a result of the rust at a lot of the body connection points I do not have a good ground throughout the body. As a result I have experienced various electrical issues. My tip, if you have any electrical issue the first test should be to make sure you have a good connection to ground. I was having an issue with my fuel gauge. It started working after I bypassed the ground wire to the cab and took the ground directly to the frame. I also installed a new set of parking lights. Neither the parking lights or the turn signals worked . I tested with my meter. No or low voltage at the socket when using the grill as my ground source. I took a jumper to a good ground source and I then had a good 12v circuit and working lights. I have selected some random locations throughout the truck and ran jumpers wires back to the frame to ensure I have a good ground through all the various body parts.

A very good reminder, good ground connections are so crucial, and easily overlooked cause it's so basic! Thanks

Grounds are the electrical equivalent to the sewer in a municipal water system. If the bathtub (or the toilet) can't drain, all the new, clean pipes and good water pressure in the world won't get the job done!
Jerry

Another good conversation gone down the toilet ...

John and Jerry, you never cease to amaze me with your wet humor.

Back on topic.
I had a Jeep years ago and the starter got to turning slow.
Tried a new starter, good battery and turned over even slower and then quit.
Check that the starter was grounded to the engine and frame.
It was not.
Bolted a ground wire from the starter to the block. Problem solved and the starter turned great.

Later that year I had to pull the tranny (don't remember why) and found the bell housing degraded where it bolted to the block.
Bell housing is aluminium and of course the engine block is steel.
Galvanic Corrosion had occurred and lost the electrical connection between the bell housing and block.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion

Good reminder to check the grounds first.
Don

When I wire up cars I treat all componets like they are mounted to a fiberglass body. Which means that everything gets a ground circuit added to it. I know that it sounds overkill but between fresh paint, gaskets and then the beginning of corrosion it will always have a ground. It really isn't as tough as you think. I install a ground block inside the car for everything to go back to, Under the hood I install a ground junction that every thing goes to. The rear for lights every thing goes to a terminal block that has a common ground terminal.

That is what am considering doing. Adding a ground block to make it easy.

Well you could do it the British way- - - - -run hot wires to everything, insulate them, and then put all the switches in the ground circuit. It takes twice as much wire that way, and doubles the chances of getting a bad connection!
Jerry

I recently chopped up a junk Nissan Sentra so that the scrap metal yard would accept it without a title. I was surprised of the number of junction blocks with 5 or more little ground wires attached to them.