How to get a good ground in your Mopar
Evidence, folks. It's a wonderful thing. It has a nifty way of throwing dirt atop the coffin of dumb claims. What makes "body sheetmetal is a perfectly good ground". such a dumb claim is how easily it's disproven. You don't even need a meter! Put a brick on the brake pedal, get a long length of 14ga wire, put one end on the battery negative terminal and bring the other end to the taillight socket shell. See how the brake light gets brighter every time you touch the wire to the socket shell? Now why might that be? Is it:
A. Skyhooks
B. The taillight fairy
C. An optical illusion; it's not really happening because sheetmetal grounds are perfect
D. Increased voltage by dint of reduced voltage drop in the ground leg of the circuit
If you answered (A) or (B), quit bogarting. Puff-puff-pass. If you answered (C), you've made up your mind based on guesses, baseless opinions, and willful ignorance and you don't want to be confused with facts. If you answered (D), congratulations, you're using the brain god gave you for its intended purpose of thinking.
This reminds me of a particularly stubborn customer who wrote in complaining that ever since his '81 Thunderbird was new, the right headlamp was dimmer than the left and neither of them was very bright. He'd tried all the different sealed beams out there, he'd squawked to the dealer when the car was under warranty, he'd replaced the headlight switch and the high/low beam switch…no change. I sent him to this page and told him $49 worth of components and 90 minutes of his time would fix the problem. He didn't like that answer at all. Wrote back all insistent that Ford wouldn't put out a car with inadequate headlight wiring, and even if they wanted to, the DOT wouldn't let them, and that couldn't possibly be the problem, I was obviously just trying to con him out of fifty bucks, etc.
I told him he was wrong and I'd prove it by sending him the parts and only charging him if it fixed the problem. He agreed, with a few more smug comments about how I was wrong. I sent him the parts, and — big surprise, amigo! — two weeks later he's all up in my inbox amazed at how the problem was fully fixed, both headlights were now equally bright and much brighter than before.
(Evidence also does other nifty stuff, too. For example, this thread provides lots of evidence that putting 67Dart273 on my ignore list was a sound decision.
)
Evidence, folks. It's a wonderful thing. It has a nifty way of throwing dirt atop the coffin of dumb claims. What makes "body sheetmetal is a perfectly good ground". such a dumb claim is how easily it's disproven. You don't even need a meter! Put a brick on the brake pedal, get a long length of 14ga wire, put one end on the battery negative terminal and bring the other end to the taillight socket shell. See how the brake light gets brighter every time you touch the wire to the socket shell? Now why might that be? Is it:
A. Skyhooks
B. The taillight fairy
C. An optical illusion; it's not really happening because sheetmetal grounds are perfect
D. Increased voltage by dint of reduced voltage drop in the ground leg of the circuit
If you answered (A) or (B), quit bogarting. Puff-puff-pass. If you answered (C), you've made up your mind based on guesses, baseless opinions, and willful ignorance and you don't want to be confused with facts. If you answered (D), congratulations, you're using the brain god gave you for its intended purpose of thinking.
This reminds me of a particularly stubborn customer who wrote in complaining that ever since his '81 Thunderbird was new, the right headlamp was dimmer than the left and neither of them was very bright. He'd tried all the different sealed beams out there, he'd squawked to the dealer when the car was under warranty, he'd replaced the headlight switch and the high/low beam switch…no change. I sent him to this page and told him $49 worth of components and 90 minutes of his time would fix the problem. He didn't like that answer at all. Wrote back all insistent that Ford wouldn't put out a car with inadequate headlight wiring, and even if they wanted to, the DOT wouldn't let them, and that couldn't possibly be the problem, I was obviously just trying to con him out of fifty bucks, etc.
I told him he was wrong and I'd prove it by sending him the parts and only charging him if it fixed the problem. He agreed, with a few more smug comments about how I was wrong. I sent him the parts, and — big surprise, amigo! — two weeks later he's all up in my inbox amazed at how the problem was fully fixed, both headlights were now equally bright and much brighter than before.
(Evidence also does other nifty stuff, too. For example, this thread provides lots of evidence that putting 67Dart273 on my ignore list was a sound decision.
)