Wiring and batteries
 

For those of you that have stripped out all of the stock wiring how did you handle distributing the power to everything from the battery.

My battery uses a bolt style terminal, I feel its kind of bad to have like 6 separate things on this one bolt. Im not sure what the optimal way to ground and power all of my stuff with the least amount of resistance would be.

Any tips?

I used a wal-mart stereo amp kit to go from the battery to a distribution/fuse panel and then out from there.

There was more than enough wire and heavy enough gauge to wire most of the harness and other junk.

you can always use relays with a fuse in the line

I have everything done and working, I just feel its not as good as it could be and its bugging me the more I think about it. I also noticed my ground cable at my battery was warm last night when I was doing some tuning.

Warm ground is BAD. What gauge return are you using?

You should (for safety's safe) have a single main breaker/fuse at the battery terminal itself and everything else (except the starter) should be after that breaker.

This is especially true if you have the battery relocated inside the car (which I'm guessing you do).

Go check out Summit Racing (or other parts houses) for some of their wiring kits, which include a fuse block.

Good luck,

-bill

I do have the battery in the car, everything on the power side is through the fuse block or is fused.
The ground cable is large, I forget the gauge but its the typical big audio amp cabling.

the car is just barely finished being built so Im sure there are some over sights I need to rectify next time I get to spend some time on the car.

Use a older vw terminal, from a 93-99 MK3 model.

A warm ground cable can mean more than one thing.

1) your cable is too small. If the only thing going was the engine (no lights or any other power hungry items) then a #8 should do the trick without getting warm so......

2) your ground connection is bad. Make sure that your wire is short and at a good bare metal bolt, preferably like the cage or subframe area.

3) you have a short in your wiring.

I typically make my ground out of #0 welding wire and it must be as short as possible. I try and put the battery near a point on the roll cage so I can not only secure the battery to it, but I can weld a lug direct to the cage and only have about 8" or less of ground cable.

#00 is even better and generally the same price.

I run #00 to the starter and use monster cable (the basic amp kit) to power fuse block.

#12 can be used for your alternator wire back to the battery.

Don't forget to add a kill switch!