Alright so basically my ground wires to my battery terminals are messed up. the bolt nut is stripped from i don't know how. and the rubber around them has a small tear in it. i was just wondering if its hard to replace the wires and if i should use any specific brand when i get new ones?

 

I did this when I dropped in my new motor. It might be a little painful to do with the engine in, but this mostly depends if you have AC and PS still. I just went to the autoparts store and got 2 48" or 52" dont recall exactly lengths of 2 gauge battery cable wire. Get a black one for negative and a red for positive. For the positive one make sure to get one with the extra wire coming out of the terminal with a butt splice connedtor because you need to connect this to the main fuse. You might want to buy a roll of 2 of electrical tape and some loom because you will have to tear the stock tape loom off.

 

wouldn't red for negative make more sense?

 

Why is that? I always figure black=ground=negative but whatever you like. It doesnt really matter as long as you know which is which.

 

lol how many things have you blown up like this black has always been negative!

 

He may be a commercial electrician...In normal 120v house wiring, the black is hot

On chassis grounded vehicles, or other DC systems however, red is always positive (or "hot", if you will), as far as I'm concerned...

Honda Dude, how's that car coming along?

 

thanks for the crash course on colors. red to me has always been like negative since i always saw it on my test papers back in the day of education, hah

 

Just replace the terminals - it's easier.
Trying to replace the existing wiring might cause more trouble.

There are retrofit battery terminals that allow you to cut the lead crimped stock battery terminals and bolt on the new ones.


-Ted

 

These are only temporary. Or at least, only designed to be temporary. Unless you use the proper dielectric grease (and almost nobody does) then they will quickly corrode.

 

I have found the brass wrap-around plated terminals more durable & reliable.
Even Wal-Mart has them now.
To be reliable, you should solder the wire to the lug. (I used a butane mini tourch.)

 

hey man whats up! My car is comming along slowly but surely, I just got a call from the machine shop that is doing my wastegate porting and it looks like they have everything done (hopefully right) so I am going to pick it up today and put the turbo on and get the sucker tuned. After that its all suspension, This thing is never going to be done Oh well when it is I'll drive it to houston if you guys ever have meets.

 

Lol, hijack...

Our cars are never done, that's what keeps us going

Good to hear you haven't blown anything up yet. They have meets in Houston, but I try to stay out of the city. If I were to break down, I'd be lost, because I don't speak the native language, lol...

 

in the navi green is ground

 

lol, I just went to houston last weekend to go to astro world and man that is such a confusing town! I understand where you are comming from. I have no idea how my sister lives there. Anyways your right these things never get finnished they just multiply things that need to be done, lol. I haven't blown up anything yet but of course I have the rtek chip that is made for the stock turbo and I have an upgraded one so I'll probably blow it up on the way to the dyno

 

I originally was going to do this but figured it wouldnt be too difficult to unwrap the harness and retape everything. What I also did was cut the extra stock ground from the negative battery to the driverside shock tower and bolted it to the negative battery terminal in addition to a grounding kit.

 

Ground is different then negative. Negative refers to a voltage below ground. But many people use the terms interchangably because they simply don't know.

In electronics, red is normally positive, brown or green is ground, and black is negative.

 

Don't confuse the guys with sine wave theory, Aaron, lol...All "negative" voltage is in that case is current flowing the other way (just as in your house wiring- where ground and common (or neutral) are both at the same potential)...It's all relative, just like time and the speed of light

 

I was happy with my red=pos black=neg but now you guys ruined all that. Thanks!

 

Did you know that electrons actually flow from negative to positive? How's that for messing up your pre-conceived notions?

 

Blasphemy!!

 

Yet true.

 

Um, I dunno what you mean unwrap and retape, but it didn't bother me when I do it.

Um, this doesn't isolate the battery terminal(s) themselves, since corrosion can impede conductivity *inside* the battery terminal itself.


-Ted

 

I meant unwrap the actually battery cables from the rest of the electrical harness that runs along the driverside to the firewall and then retape the wires that were originally wrapped up along with the stock battery cables. Maybe I worded something wrong but I used brand new battery cables from terminals to the other end.