RE: [DML] grounding equipment to battery?

["mgutkowski@xxxx" <webmaster@xxxx>]

Hi Andy

The chassis is grounded as you know, but provides a very large lump of
metal connected to the battery down one piece of wire. That large lump of
metal picks up EM noise from all over the place, and the battery is relied
apon to "snub" it (the battery acts like a large capacitor - something for
which lead acid batteries are supremely good at as I have recently
discovered). I'm trying to explain this in layman's terms and failing
miserably! Basically the instantaneous voltage on a given part of the
chassis is more prone to "bouncing" - ie having noise on it - the further
away from the battery terminal it is. The better the conductivity to the
battery, the less noise you'll see. Because the entire chassis relies on
the one piece of wire to the battery, in an ideal situation you'd want to
eliminate it for devices prone to noise. 

However, if you experience problems (and I doubt you will) by using a
different ground point, you can snub it at the amplifier by putting a
capacitor across the power supply terminals. You can buy caps for this
purpose from car hi fi shops.

You can't break anything by experimenting - just set it up how you'd like
and see if you like the sound.

Martin
#1458
#4426
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Soma576@xxxx
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 20:48:20 EST
To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [DML] grounding equipment to battery?
>
>
> List,
>
> this isn't exclusively DeLorean-related but it does deal with the
> stereo equipment i am installing in my D.
>
> i have read from many sources that the best place to ground high
> power stereo equipment is to ground it directly to the ground
> connector on the battery rather than the frame. if you ground all
> of your equipment with a distribution block and have only one heavy
> gauge cable going to the battery, this will eliminate ground loop
> interference. i have NEVER seen anything grounded to a car battery
> before - is this really a good idea? i should think it would be ok
> but i'm not sure! any ideas?