Grounding Throttlebody?

interesting. i need more people to try it, or input.

 

Just throwing this out there. The only mod I have done to my TB, is put a turbo before it.

 

Is this for 1st gen too or only 2nd ????? And how does it help to ground it....

 

Get a couple of NOS stickers for the back window. That will add at least 25 HP. This ground mod is only good for about 2HP. I butt dynoed it.

 

I wonder if it will help with the barrel roll?... kidding... My truck has been a dog lately so time to clean the throttle body and MAF. My serious question for those who claim results is this: What grade fuel have you been using?

 

PMK touched on it... there is no other explanation (IF it actually does anything beyond the psychosomatic butt-dyno).

The TPS is a fully contained electronic unit.
The throttle control servo is a fully contained electronic unit.

Having 300 ohms or 300k between the throttle body itself and the chassis means nothing to these components... they have their own grounds, and you could verify that, but I would not because applying your meter to the wrong wire could damage the ECU logic circuit (ohmmeter works by applying a voltage and measuring the current flow).

But the throttle body is connected to a composite intake manifold, and a plastic airbox. I would expect the TB itself to show a high resistance to ground... the 300 ohm or 300k readings seen might be the result of conductance of the composite intake manifold (it will be conductive if it contains carbon fiber).

The only thing that grounding the TB can possibly do is bleed off static... but you still have the issue of static in the rest of the intake ducts.
We MIGHT be seeing static buildup in the TB setting up some kind of capacitive influence on the TPS feedback.

Will the mod help? Good question, and not one that can be answered on the dyno, because we're talking throttle response/driveability benefits... it's not something that can be measured on anything except the "butt dyno"
But the mod can't hurt anything.


For those asking about the wire size, which screw to use, etc....
It doesn't matter.
You are simply grounding the body. There is no current normally flowing. There is nothing connected to the screws other than the TB.
You could use any of the screws... you could even just braze the wire to a hose clamp and wrap that around the TB.

Wire size? Again, doesn't matter. A proper static discharge system will actually run through a 10meg resistor to prevent circuit (or technician) damage caused by a current surge to ground. You don't WANT a lot of current flowing... and if the wire is always connected, you won't build enough of a charge to cause more than a couple of nano-amperes to flow.
A piece of 32ga wire could do the job... but for practical applications, I won't use a wire smaller than 18ga stranded in a vehicle, and I won't go smaller than 16ga stranded in anything directly connected to the engine. This is simply for durability due to vibration and weather.



Some people need to go back and review electronics 101.
Ohms are units of resistance.
Mhos are units of conductance.
zero ohms = no resistance
No resistance = infinite current flow
Open circuit /= no resistance
Open circuit = no connection, no conductivity, no current flow.

True, you can't truly have zero ohms without a superconductor, but for all practical application purposes, if a meter reads zero ohms, you have a dead short... NOT an open circuit. Anything less than 0.05 or 0.005 or however sensitive your meter is can be considered "zero" for the sake of the measurement.

An open circuit would be infinite resistance, normally indicated on a digital meter by "0l" or "0r", and of course, the needle at "infinity" on an analog meter. I used to use a 12-digit digital that displayed "0vr-range"... overkill, but it was a $2000 Beckman.

 

I have no idea if grounding the TB helps or not, don't really care.

I can come up with one possibility on why it might make a difference. With a floating(electrically) TB I could see electrical noise being generated on a position sensor, which could result in an incorrect or slowly filtered analog to digital conversion reading by the ECU. Grounding the TB would in effect shield the sensor and reduce noise on the sensor ADC lines and in effect reduce the feedback loop time between the position sensor and the butterfly.

Its all speculation though as I have no idea if any sensors even exist inside the TB. I am not going to do it personally, but I could think of one possible effect and thought I would stir the pot.