Ground wires or voltage stablizer works on FE?

[civic94]

I found these on ebay, one is ground wires that connect to the battery's negative terminal and theres about 7 wires that go on any ground around the car, and is about 15 bucks shipped. claims a better ground can improve power and FE, but i only care about FE.



the other is a voltage Stabilizer, it claims that it helps reduce voltage if there is too much, and increases voltage is there is too little. so i guess its going to aim for 14.4 volts constant, for best FE and power (claims so)

heres the link for the stablizer- http://cgi.ebay.com/JDM-VOLTAGE-STAB...3A1%7C294%3A50



i'm a little iffy about the voltage stabilizer, i mean, shouldn't cars have them already? like once i turn on lights, the alternator kicks in, and the engine has a different tone and waste a bit more gas. once there is more than enough power, the alternator cuts back output.


I might give the ground wires a shot, any suggestions? i want to get a bit more mpg on my car since its a 1.6 liter 3 speed auto, no torque converter lockup. (97 geo prizm) and 60 mph is at 3000 rpm

[theholycow]

I recently found a silly craigslist ad for ground straps:
http://www.gassavers.org/showthread.php?t=11004

I suppose if your ground straps are not working right, it's possible that you could see an improvement by replacing them. I hate the idea of rewarding someone for a misleading ad about fuel economy, so IMO you should buy your replacement parts at a parts store or a dealer.

The same goes for the voltage regulator. If your voltage regulator has failed then replace it with one from a parts store, don't encourage someone who sells one claiming "Increase Horse Power & Torque" and such. Besides, that eBay "JDM blah blah blah" one is almost certainly made incredibly cheaply, and is not made specifically for your car (so you'll have to custom-fit it); and that's if it works at all. I wouldn't be surprised if it was fake and doesn't do anything.

Edit: Oh, that was a "stabilizer", not a regulator. Forget it.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

I'd pay $15 for the ground wire kit for Marvin, his grounds are all green and crusty. The stabiliser is probably just a big capacitor... just buy a big capacitor.

[civic94]

I might just get the wires. roadwarrior, you can get it on ebay for 14.99 shipped (the lowest i can find).

I kinda remembered from HS auto shop that electricity goes on the path of least resistance, so if I can get the 7 ground wire set, ill probably put one on the engine, tranny, Intake manifold, and the rest going to all over the engine bay

[hi tech hillbilly]

you wont see any improvement in FE. the best thing to do is to replace ground leads with stock replacement cables. you can check your stock ones for corrosion, clean the ends and the surface they mate to with a wire brush to get a good solid ground if you think this is a concern or replace them if they look too corroded. unless youre having wacky electrical problems (all lights come on when pressing brake pedal etc.) then everything is fine. i have seen other mechanics in my shop completely baffled looking at dismantled electrical systems when it turned out to be a bad ground/lead or corroded ground or power leads.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Well if you stick a high impedance DVM on the sensitive voltage range between various parts of your motor when it's running and read any voltage, then doing something about ground wires would do some good. Good ground bonding can also prevent cooling system corrosion, heater core and waterpump failure.

Stock replacement cables will run a lot higher than $15... $15 a cable maybe.

On the stabilizer front, I've got a couple of big capacitors I will employ in this regard when I get round to it. The problem with a vehicles electrical system is that it has a definite response time, demand from the battery has a definite rise time. This is most noticeable in cold weather, but is still there in warmer weather. It can mean that as soon as you click the headlights on, your next 4 sparks aren't very strong, because the chemical process in the battery has not ramped up to supply to the total amount of current demanded and the voltage drops briefly. It could be that in hot weather, the drop from the AC and the cooling fan kicking on and off is costing you more efficiency than if you wired them on full, just because of the constant load changes. A capacitor can supply current more instantaneously than a battery so can bridge sudden load changes until the battery catches up. Mostly the alternator is regulated via the field coils according to battery voltage longer term, so unless it happens to be full on at the point in time of a load change it won't really help. Most cars have had ECU controlled alternator charging since the mid 80s.