ground for head unit, wiring harness or braided one?

[WannaKatana]

I'm installing a head unit. I have a wiring harness which has black/
negative but there is also that braided one. Which do I use?

[D.Kreft]

On Feb 11, 3:41 pm, "WannaKatana" > wrote:

> I'm installing a head unit. I have a wiring harness which has black/
> negative but there is also that braided one. Which do I use?

My shot-in-the-dark educated guess would be that it probably doesn't
matter. However, the way to know for sure is to get an ohmmeter and a
super-long pair of leads and measure the DC resistance from each wire
back to the negative terminal of the battery. You'd then use the wire
that yields the lowest reading.

If you can't figure out how to get your leads all the way around the
car to the battery terminal, then pick a known-good ground inside the
car and measure the resistance between each wire and your reference
point. This won't tell you in absolute terms how good your ground is,
but it will tell you which one will provide the better ground between
the two.

If all else fails, you can just throw your hands in the air and run a
wire all the way back to the battery's negative (-) terminal. :-)

-dan

[WannaKatana]

It seems there is no ground wire coming from the Intrepid wiring
harness so it seems I have to use the braided one attached directly to
the ground wire coming from the head unit wiring harness.

[D.Kreft]

On Feb 11, 5:22 pm, "WannaKatana" > wrote:

> It seems there is no ground wire coming from the Intrepid wiring
> harness so it seems I have to use the braided one attached directly to
> the ground wire coming from the head unit wiring harness.

Well then, that makes the decision regarding which wire to use that
much easier, doesn't it? :-)

-dan

[John Durbin]

And the braided one works WAY better than the one in the harness would,
anyway, even if the one in the harness did make it to the chassis
somewhere. No substitute for keeping the ground short & heavy gauge when
you absolutely want to ensure a quality ground. Just need to make sure
it's also connected securely to the car chassis at the other end.

JD

D.Kreft wrote:

> On Feb 11, 5:22 pm, "WannaKatana" > wrote:
>
>
>>It seems there is no ground wire coming from the Intrepid wiring
>>harness so it seems I have to use the braided one attached directly to
>>the ground wire coming from the head unit wiring harness.
>
>
> Well then, that makes the decision regarding which wire to use that
> much easier, doesn't it? :-)
>
> -dan
>