I think my grounds may be causing some of my electrical problems, but how do I know? I dont wanna be wasting my time redoing everything when its not neccessary.

 

you have to check voltage between negative battery post and wherever you're supposed to have ground in the engine bay (engine block, body ground points). You may also want to check the grounds the ECU is supposed to have. The voltage should be close to 0.

You could also test resistance but in that case, please disconnect the battery. Again, resistance should be very low.

Hugues -

 

I thought you can check resistan of the circult as long as the circult is not powered. Well any ways in my opinion it wont hurt to clean all grounds or even upgrade some of the grounds if you have time. I mean after all our cars is kind of old. And i have a ground strip that is pretty beat up but still produce no resisten but i am changing it any ways.

 

Cleaning and adding grounds will do your car a favor.
Imagine 10+ years of corrosion. There are many grounds in the engine bay but the main one is at the bell housing near the starter. Some I can think of are :
below the throttle body, next to the wiper motor, behind the pass. lights and of course the ECU ground.
I re-did the ECU ground and all other with fresh marine quality wires. I didn't have any problems to doing this but it can't hurt it. Clean up the area and re-attach after sanding off the corrosion on the connectors.
Adding grounds will also help.

 

Well, technically when you are checking the resistance of a wire, you want it isolated. As with ANY component. Otherwise you arent getting a true reading.

Jarrett

 

You can never have enough grounds! Adding more is never a waste of time.

Over time (especially 17 or so years?) the stock ones wear out. Add a few straps here and there. It's cheap, doesn't take much time, and any problems with bad grounds will disappear.

I spend 2 bucks on a ground strap, from the battery to the mount of the lead coil (chassis) and my car RAN after that! That was when I first got the car. It used to smoke real bad, and misfire and pop alot. 2 bucks later, it ran like a dream.

 

I agree. While I'm under there working anyway, additional grounds are being placed too; although, some of the originals are no where to be found.

 

Well first of, if you have any speculation that the grounds are bad, replace them. I'll say : i replaced my grounds and found a whole new world of Rx-7ness... no more little voltage spikes causeing the car to hesistate, ect... there are a slew of writeups on this forum for replaceing ground wires. once your done with the little project you'll love the outcome.

-Markus

"Be sure to replace/reground your fuel pump, this for some reason made the most change for me"