Ground wire? To frame? Spliced?

[Kbl7td]

Will be building a Coupe 65 soon. On my SLC, ground wires gave me a challenge. It was hard to decide to run all individual grounds, or splice together, or what to do. For instance the headlights, I had grounds for low beam, high, turn signal. That’s 6 possible grounds.

What’s the general path to creating clean ground wire without having a bunch of posts mounted to the frame and splices? Anyone have diagrams, videos etc?

All of this is assuming from scratch wiring, I usually use coachcontrols wiring relay center.

[GoDadGo]

I used the Ron Francis harness on my MK-4 and added grounds for each light that went directly to the frame...I took this action because it seemed that more than a few folks had issues with dim lights...While I don't know if this helps or not, I don't think it hurt either.

[Namrups]

I have grounded the battery to the frame. I have ground points at all four corners of the car. I have a ground bus bar under the dash. All connections to the frame members have been drilled and tapped. The powder coating has also been removed.

[Papa]

I used the supplied Ron Francis harness, which tied all the grounds in the harness to a single attachment point on the chassis near the fuse block. Additionally, the battery (-) is directly connected to the chassis near the battery. There is a ground strap from the engine block to the chassis, and the alternator ground to a point on the engine. I've also added an additional common ground for my EFI and ignition components to the chassis in the engine compartment and another behind the dash for a couple of additional relays I added.

[Kbl7td]

All good suggestions. My main concerns have been…avoiding too many exposed areas on the frame where grounds attach. Ofcourse you paint after but, you know. Avoiding too many actual ground wires which clutter up the harness. Additionally, avoiding having too many grounds tied into a single point at the frame, if anything happens to that one wire your whole zone is out. Like I said before this wiring is all custom so we’ll see how it goes.

I like the idea of having 4 points at the corner of the car. Battery always grounded to frame and motor. Then a central ground for all center located electronics.

[GoDadGo]

All good suggestions. My main concerns have been…avoiding too many exposed areas on the frame where grounds attach.

I like the idea of having 4 points at the corner of the car. Battery always grounded to frame and motor. Then a central ground for all center located electronics.

I've got a single large ground (pole) from the battery to the frame and two smaller from the frame to the block.

In addition to the wiring harness ground, my ground pig tails for each light was quite clean with all of contacts being covered in electrical grease...

While it is true that redundant grounds are not needed, they don't hurt your system if they are added.

Good Luck & Happy Wiring!

[JohnK]

Behind the dash, where I had a lot of ground wires to find a home for, I used a ground bus from Blue Sea Systems. I think a bus bar is a better approach than splicing wires together onto a common terminal, or stacking terminals on one grounding screw/stud.