Grounding Throttlebody?

Does it matter which bolt on the throttle body you connect it to?

 

i think im going to do this to a friends truck without him knowing and see if he notices any difference.

 

what would it do? grounding isnt going to make the fuel atomize better. what effect would having a better ground have on preformance?

 

If you really want better throttle response get rid of the electronic TB and go to mechanical.

 

Correct, the fuel is injected much farther downstream. Supposedly grounding the throttle body shortens the response time of the butterfly valve actuator to gas pedal command. Of course, the actuator already has a ground line in the harness.

I think it's all psychological, akin to marketing $200 speaker cables as sounding better than $20 speaker cables.

 

I think it does do something. Sure, the plug into the throttle body has a ground, but that entire assembly is plastic, and I measured it from throttle-body bolt to the negative terminal to get that 340,000 ohm resistance, that's way too high.

My dad walked up and saw what I was doing, so he popped the hood on his f-150 to see if this would be something he could do, too. 0.1 ohms to ground from throttle body to negative terminal.

For something that, in theory, should improve the efficiency of your ignition or even make you FEEL like your truck is running better, you should do it, especially these folks on here who are claiming to be electrical wizards, it takes less than 5 minutes and shouldn't cost you anything.

 

Well the only problem with this is when your taking your reading your just reading the case of the throttle body. Not the motor in which opens and closes the butterfly valve. There is no electrical components that go to the case. So grounding it shouldnt do anything at all. Really all your doing is grounding the case from static electricity. i have no problem with people trying it and good for them for thinking it does something for them. For me im not going to bc it doesnt make sense.

 

Ideally, with electric motors, the chassis of said motor should be grounded to the chassis of the device of which it is mounted to, being the throttle body itself.

 

The only way to tell is to open up the motor of one and actually see. The housing for the motor is made out of plastic. And not all motors are grounded to there chassis. The majority of them are wired into a dedicated ground due to a chassis not being a reliable ground.

 

This is why I used the term "ideally", and why the argument that this so-cheap-it's-probably-free mod is just as likely to do exactly what it's supposed to do than it is to do nothing. There isn't enough raw data on either side of the coin to refute one way or the other as it sits now, unless a few of us are diligent enough to actually try it.

 

I'll assume the grounding kit has low O2 wire, clear insulation, gold plated terminals and being a #10 wire it should be good for at least 30 amps. Do we need one for a 5 or 6 spd?

 

it was mainly a discussion on the electrical science of it. i agree there is not enough data either way.

 

The original post on the mazda forum was intended for a manual vehicle, but the OP is siting throttle/shifting performance gains as it pertains to an automatic. I'm not sure if the mod does anything for either of them.

As far as the wire itself goes, I'd use whatever you can get for cheap (in the #10-#14 range, no need for plated terminals)- it's a chassis ground thats not going to be any longer than 3 feet and have milliamps of electricity, if any, occupying it.

 

I'm definitely... DEFINITELY not advocating the purchase of one of those $100 grounding kits, but as for a mod that takes less than 5 minutes, I say why the hell not?

 

haha yeah thats funny, $100 for those kits.

 

What about the thought of resistance buildup in the system as parts move, drivetrain runs and creates the resistance, and the regular ground cannot disperse it, but the added ground makes a "loop" and keeps buildup from happening? Just a thought from my radio brain

 

well as in the mazda forum, I have a 6 speed manual. Bradley, you should post pics of exactly where you measured from, picking up a small gauge wire should be pretty easy as far as a cheap install. I went out and looked under the hood earlier when I was cleaning my MAF sensor today. the throttle body is hung between the plastic intake manifold and the plastic air intake tube. There is not direct metal ground for the system except for the one in the harness itself.

 

I will post pictures, along with a complete write-up as soon as I can tomorrow.



As for the performance of the mod- I drove into orlando today on the freeway, around town and pretty briskly. It does, unbelievably, seem to me shifting and down-shifting smoother, with an improvement to throttle response. Again, it could be psychosomatic, but I'm going to leave it on for now. Like I said, I'll take some photos tomorrow and I'll post pictures of my meter readings so you folks can see exactly what I've been talking about.

 

ah what the hell

 

I guess I'll go look for some 10 gauge wire...