The Great Ground Debate
 

I thought I would start a debate on the best possible wiring setup I have heard many arguements and I thought I would see what your opinion is??

Is it better to run ground directly from battery to amplifier or ground of body to amplifier???

Both. But to choose, battery.

actually it depends. end of debate.

i have and i will not do it nexted time
i would if i tryed all othere places 1st

copper is best, I run a dedicated line all the way back to the battery. I also increase the primary to the alternator up to the same guage and replace the battery negative wit same guage. Light carbon steel is ok for signal lights, not 10 kilowatt SPL systems.

Absolutely back to the battery. No question and no debate, ground back to the battery.

Both.

Upgrade Bat-Chassis, then run from there to the back, ground there, then to your amp. Let your amp choose the best route!

An average chassis ground return is roughly equivalent to 3/0 wire....

The problem with grounding to chassis are many.

We know we like to have the same amperage capacity in our ground and power wire. If, as an example, we run 4AWG power to our amp and 4AWG ground from our amp back to battery we know that our power and ground have the same amperage capacity.

How do we know that grounding to the trunk or chassis has the same amperage capacity as our power wire? We don't! We can measure continuity between where our amp is grounded at the chassis and the negative on the battery easily with a multi meter (the sad part is most people dont even do this). So, we get something like 0.01 ohm resistance, what does that tell us? Not much useful except that we have a good ground at mili-amp levels. What is our ground potential at 10, 20, 40, 100 amps of current draw? I don't know either.

What path does the current connect back to the battery when chassis grounded? We do know that it takes the path of least resistance but where is that? We don't know, so does it really matter running our RCA cables anywhere specific? No it does not.

Do you think that the ground path of least resistance, when chassis grounding, changes with current draw? Absolutely it does.

Do you think vehicles with composite body panels and panels held together with adhesives offer good ground paths? Probably not as good as older vehicles with metal panels and spot welds.

By grounding back to the battery we answer so many quesitons and take so many variables out of the equation that it is well worth the extra funds and effort.

how do you know this? Is there a test report or something? Because I would be interested in checking it out.