I was reading in my Car Stereo Cookbook i bought, and I came across something interesting. It said the best way to ground multiple devices is to go to a distro block, and then run a ground wire all the way back to the same grounding point as the battery, eliminating ground loops. Is this right? In past installs, I just drill a hole in the frame under the trunk, and I haven't had any problems with noise. Maybe they are talking about IF you have ground loops...
Depends what the system is really, grounding everything at the same point goes a long way towards eliminating a potential difference between various components in the system ie. head unit,amps,crossovers etc. The chassis of these components would usually all need to be at ground potential, however this isn't always practical, often in the case of power amps, these would be mounted remotely from the head unit, in the boot/trunk and because of power loss considerations the ground lead sould be as short as possible.
Keep ground connections as short as you can, clean paint or contamination from the point of connection ie. chassis or body work and ensure a sound mechanical and electrical fixing especially at the base of the antenna/mounting, if this is designed to be grounded, most are but some are not.
Regards.
g4uk
Now Stephen Kephart (I think, he'll probably post up as well I hope) and I had a nice battle going about resistance on a ground lead. Most installers do not even think to check this. A high resistance on a ground lead will cause headaches for amplifiers. Make sure you check the resistance on the ground return to see what the resistance is. Make sure the ground points are nice and clean first, upgrade the ground from battery to chassis next (especially if you have multiple amps), next check that resistance on the return between the ground point in the back and the battery negative post, if the resistance is high, then it is time to wire the ground direct to the battery.
-------------
Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.
You could probably do any number of installs with multiple grounding points and have no problems. However, that one time you have to chase down a ground loop, it kind of negates the time savings from all the other installs. I've had noise-free installs with multiple ground points, and I've had a handful that were noisy, but I have *never* had noise in an install that used a single-point ground. Guess how I wire the grounds now that I'm older and wiser?
Scott Gardner