Beefy ground install (longish)

[Riley McDowall <mcm@intergate.bc.ca>]

>  One thing that isn't covered in the Bentley is the inadequecy(sp?) of the
>grounds on the Scirocco, especially the 16V. Clean all the ground points,
>and the battery -ve terminal on the main ground strap. As another poster
>did, rewiring the main ground isn't a bad idea, although simply adding an
>auxiliary ground wire from the battery -ve to the alternator case can fix
>the problem. If you don't want to figure out the length of wire to do this,
>and the location to mount the wire, New Dimensions sells the wire that comes
>with instructions on how to mount it, that will simplify the procedure.


I wasn't having any electical problems, but I decided I might as well
tackle this project anyway since I keep hearing how bunk the grounds are in
the 16v cars.  I went down to my fave car audio store, bought 10 Phoenix
Gold 4ga ring terminals, 5ft of red cable, and about 10ft of black cable.

First I redid the +12v cables from the alternator to the starter and
starter to battery.  I decided the easiest way to do it would be to just
add the 4ga cable to the stock 8ga cable.  I tied the new wire to the hoses
running along the front of the block under the intake manifold, then down
to the starter.  Since there wasn't a lot of room on that stud on the
starter, I decided to replace the stock cable running from the starter to
the battery with a new run of 4ga.

Next I ran a ground from the alternator case to the negative terminal of
the battery.  This was easy, I just ran it alongside the positive cable.

The first ground I replaced ran from the cylinder head (near the cold start
valve) to the tranny.  It took a while to find where this cable attached to
the tranny...in the 16v cars it's almost impossible to see this bolt
looking down from the top.  The best way to get to it is from underneath
the car, reaching up from behind the trans.  This is also where the ground
that runs up to the battery terminates.  On its way up to the negative
terminal it attaches to the body; this point is also visible from under the
car.  I didn't touch this ground for a couple reasons...

Bentley was absolutely no help, so all this was discovered by taking stuff
apart and looking around.  It took me a long time to get this far (3 hours)
and since I had run out of ring terminals and patience, I left this last
ground as is; however since it wasn't long enough to reach the terminal on
my new Optima I snipped it at the point where it emerges from underneath
the airbox.

I didn't have any problems before starting all this work, so the payoff
wasn't readily apparent.  I did notice that my voltmeter now shows more
than 14v when the alternator is charging at max, which is more than it had
ever shown before by about .5v.  All that 4 guage looks pretty trick under
the hood too!  Still, I think I should probably add a ground from the body
to the battery.


If anyone can think of anything to add or correct, I'd sure appreciate it!
It was late at night, and I was kinda making things up as I went along....


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