[AT] Grounding

Steve W. swilliams268 at frontier.com
Fri Oct 24 07:44:22 PDT 2014


charlie hill wrote:
> Steve,  when I wire electronics on my boat (or did when I was 
> actively using it) I always put a fuse in the ground wire from the
> electronic device to the buss.  That way if the starter ground on
> the engine gets corrupted it will blow the fuses in the electronics
> before it tries to find a ground path through the electronic device.
> I guess they probably do that on auto electronics as well?
> 
> Charlie
> 

Depends on the vehicle. Most stuff built since about 2000 has individual 
hot side fusing for every circuit. Some go WAY overboard though. I had a 
Cadillac in that had a total of 7 fuse panels.

This is also why doing trailer wiring on them is a real PIA. The old 
trick of just splicing into the tail lights can easily blow the body 
control computer or burn up the wiring due to the excessive load. Plus 
on many there are no longer power feeds that turn on/off for things like 
tail/stop/turn. They are fed a constant voltage and the ground is 
switched open/closed through a relay.

-- 
Steve W.



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