Cyde .. ~~ u got a pics with the wiring u did ?? ~ ... and how much is the T1R kit ?? ~ ...

 

This is getting way out of hand. I just wanted to know where the HP increase is coming from. Why is that such a hard question to answer?

I understand that the 10hp increase was on the IS300 but I can't understand the theory of what caused the increase. Maybe it's a fault of mine but if somebody says "here bolt this on and it will give you X more horsepower" I always want to know why.

CAI = more horsepower because of a denser air charge
Exhaust Header = more horsepower because exahaust gases can escape the combustion chamber easier
Hondata ECU = more horsepower because of revised fuel maps and VTEC changeover point
Grounding Wires = more horsepower because ?????

 

I believe that grounding wires help Mazda (or was it Audi maybe?) owners a lot, so some people claim it works for them. But they say it helps their throttle response on DBW, but I can't remember the case exactly.

I think the theory is like this: Bad grounding can cause your alternator to sap more power than it needs? By making a better ground, electrical systems are more effecient. Does it create HP, I don't believe it until I see some real writeup w/ a good explanation and context. One possibility is by making the alternator more effecient, it would cause less parasitic loss to the engine?

 

hmm.... I doubt this question can be answered here. I will try to search more on this topic.
also, again, i did not say it will increase hp on TSX. I said it will improve the grounding on TSX b/c stock is not good.

 

that's generally what I heard, but I don't have good read to support this........

 

hee... i really doubt they would lie...
b/c they were actually testing a voltage stablizer on a car that applied for volunteer test.
It turned out the voltage stablizer only gain 2 or 3 hp. Both I/H/E and ground wire setup gave them significant gain.
But yeah, they may lie, there is a possibility. who knows...

 

From I-MOD on RSX forum:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++

Great write up taken from iVTECDaily.com.
Much props to Bryan AKA StarMax for taking the time and doing a great step by step write up, Thanks Bryan!!http://www.ivtecdaily.com/rsx/mods/groundWires.html

Introduction
One of the most recent tuning trends to come out of Japan is the use of additional ground wires. These are add-on wires that are supposed to provide a cleaner ground for various engine components, and therefore allow them to work more efficiently. It seems like every time I read an article about a Japanese manufacture's car, there's always a pic of the engine bay, and one thing they all seem to have in common is additional ground wires.

Personally I couldn't believe that a couple of extra grounds could make any kind of performance difference, but then a couple months ago a very well respected member of the Clubrsx community installed a ground wire kit, and promptly posted a dyno chart to prove the results. There is was, a couple of hp staring me in the face, proving my assumption wrong. So now the only question was which kit to get.


Shopping
Several companies currently sell ground wiring kits for the RSX, all of which have slightly different styles and layouts. A very popular kit is the Hyper Ground System from XS-Engineering. This kit has three wires that attach to the battery, and an additional two wires that link up two more points to the other wires. It runs about $100 at most tuner shops.

Another kit is the Circle Earth System from HKS. This kit has 8 wires that all hook up to the batter terminal via a very cool circular distribution block. The design is to connect various points of the engine bay to one central location, the battery. The Circle Earth kit runs about $125.

Another kit is the Earth Code kit from Spoon Sports. The kit has three wires, and only two wires that connect to the battery and one additional wire that connects another point to one of the wires. It runs about $130.

I was basically sold on the HKS kit, when a couple guys started making their own kits from car stereo wire and getting similar results. For a fraction of the cost, and a couple extra hours of labor, I could make my own ground wires kit and design it any way I wanted..

I really liked the design of the HKS Circle Earth system, so my DIY ground wire kit is based on that design. I wanted most if not all of my wires to go back to the battery. But I wanted to have different grounding points in the engine bay. I ended up combining some of the Circle Earth connection points with some of the Hyper points along with some of the points some of the other DIY and no-name Japanese kits have. My connections are:

Battery to Cylinder Head
Battery to Intake Manifold
Battery to Alternator
Battery to Left Engine Mount
Battery to Front Frame
Battery to Stock Ground
Battery to Shift Linkage
Battery to Strut Brace
Left Engine Mount to Left Fender

To connect this slew of wires to the battery I needed to buy some sort of terminal. I looked at just about every battery terminal for high-end stereo equipment, but all of them would require me to disconnect the stock ground cable which I wanted to avoid. I then got the idea to solider 4 wires together into a single 2 gauge terminal, then stack two terminals back to back and bolt them onto the existing negative battery connector.

For wire, I decided to use 8 gauge wire since I had so many wires to connect, using anything bigger would be crazy. I figured the HKS kit uses 8 gauge, so it must be good enough. I shopped around for wire, and while for the most part wire is wire, the higher the strand count the more flexible and cleaner the wire generally is.

I found that Lightning Audio sells some good 8 gauge wire in various colors with a 735 strand count, which I found at Car Domain for $.50/ft. I also picked up the necessary terminals from Car Domain, since they were a good price there too.


Installation
Before ordering my wire I measured out approximate lengths for all the ground wires with some string. I figured I'd need about 22 feet, so I ordered 25 just in case. To install the ground wires I first strung the wire from the battery to the desired connection points and cut it to length. I then held them in place with some tie-wraps to make sure the wires were laid out properly and cut to the right length. I then removed the wires and installed their terminals with a combination of crimping and soldering. I then connected the terminals to the various points of the engine bay, connected the two big terminals to the negative battery post and tie-wrapped the wire in place so they wouldn't move around.

Here are the wires I connected and their lengths:

Ground Wire Connection Wire Length in Inches
Battery to Cylinder Head 29
Battery to Intake Manifold 30
Battery to Alternator 39
Battery to Left Engine Mount 39
Battery to Front Frame 21
Battery to Stock Ground 33
Battery to Shift Linkage 33
Battery to Strut Brace 40
Left Engine Mount to Left Fender 16
Total 280 (~24 feet)

Review
Total Price: $24 (including shipping)
Total Time: 2-3 hours
Level of Difficulty (1-10): 4
Purchase Location: Car Domain


Comments: This is a very cheap mod if you do-it-yourself, and the results were good but not dramatic. I didn't expect to actually feel the 2-3 hp (if they are actually there), I was able to feel the engine running more smoothly then previously. The installation was actually more work then I expected, but nothing complicated. It was a nice project for a sunny Saturday afternoon.

 

hahaaa.... okay okay... l;ots of people think ground wire can give your car a BIG BOOST... THAT IS TOTALLY WRONG.

For IS300 which can gain 10hp... it is in theory... but it should not gaining that much... 2 - 3hp.. that is normal. If anyone can gain more than that, which means your car grounding system is REALLY SUCKS!

For those people wondering why Ground Wire can improve preformance, first read the post from I-MOD. If you still cannot tell yourself "Ground Wires DO gain some preforamce.", try to take out your organial ground wire from your battery to your body and replace a cheap cheap wire from it. Tell me if you can feel of any different. IF YOU still insist that ground wire do nothing but just look. I would recommend you go and get yourself 2 Type-R stickers and have them INSTALLED on both side of your body, Remember you must align the sticker to the opps. side in order to gain the preformace. From what I heard and learned that any rice car which put up Type-R stickers can generally gain 5hp + each. The more you stick on the more you gain.

Good LUCK!

 

Serious re-write:

Ground wire would NOT give you an additional preformance gain BUT ensure your engine preform as what it designed for.

 

um yea whateva he said seems right

 

In order to answer your question, ask youself a question how do you start your engine, but ligthen up a matches and drop it into your gas tank? or starting up by a electronical ignitor?

 

That I agree 100%

 

BTW, my hard start issue was gone after the ground wire installation. Woohoo...

 

I understand that it is a spark that triggers the air/fuel mixture to ignite but I still don't understand how a 0.7ohm resistance between the chassis and the negative terminal on the battery loses any horsepower. Since nobody seems to have a real answer, I guess I'll just call it black magic and move on.

Anyhow if you think it looks cool then that's great. If you think it makes your car run better, that's fantastic.

 

How do you ligthen your spark? Is it ligthen up by ligther? or by Electronic?

Once again, GROUND WIRE WILL NOT PROVIDE YOU AN ADDITIONAL GAIN. IT JUST SMOOTH OUT EVERYTHING AND ENSURE YOU GOT 200HPs FROM YOUR FLYWHEEL!!!

OMG!

 

So this helps to take away drive train loss as far as power? Does the car idle better or anything like that? What becomes smooth?

 

One last post on this topic and I am done.

First everyone was saying that there is horsepower to be gained from doing this mod. Now you're saying that it won't gain any horsepower just make everything run smoother. As I mentioned in my previous post that you quoted but apparently didn't read, I understand that we have an electronic ignition system. I further understand that a higher spark temperature can be beneficial in some circumstances but in those cases I would change plugs not grounding wires.
I was asking very simple and honest questions but everyone got defensive and answered them with rhetorical questions. I asked them out of curiosity and not out of malice.

Finally, I am happy that you are happy with the mod and that's all that really matters.

I'm done.

 

gratz! let's go back to North Shore on Saturday and tell the lady you fixed it, ROFL>

 

Yes, what it REALLY did is make sure your fuel burn better, your spark function more stable. So end up you get better Idle, better fuel economic and better throttle response.

 

geezz... HELLO!!! can you stop being stubborn and picking words out of our message and make up your own story and stick it back to our mouth?

The IS300 gain is what I read. I don't make it up myself.

Spoon_TSX suggested that it is not actually a "gain" like supercharge or turbocharge. It is more like recovering the power. You know? like from 98% back to 100% usage.

Well, you should go thru this whole thread again imo. Or just go somewhere and read more. If you don't have the time or simply not convinced. Just don't do it. I am not here to sell you some service.

 

that I don't know, I don't have a smoothness-meter to measure it. Or Dan Martin is gonna come quote it and ask me to do a smoothness-dyno.

 

Well, anyways... :o :o :o

 

hahaa... Sure. How is your engine light issue going?

 

They will call me tom... the mechanic who tried to fix my car is not working today.
He will call tech line tom...

 

WTH, they need to call a technical support line??

 

yes... the mechanic said he must speak to the tech line before trying sth else. Next thing he wants to try is to swap the computer.

 

Then you will get a new ECU then... good to you. (You can now reset all of your milage on your car.)

 

Oh???? don't they just put the number back in????

 

I don't think so.

 

No one has still answered the question though. WHY does it increase power/efficiency. The only thing I can think of is anything that runs on electricity. You could possibly have a higher current spark, but I don't know how the ignitors work.

I think it's mostly FUD, but I'll reserve my judgement either way until I have proof.

Either way guys, it does make the engine compartment look nice.

 

I like your nickname... (Lung Fu Mo Shi) Cool...

OKay, in general speaking, the better electronical system you have the better of your spark glow, the better of you spark glow, the better fuel burn, the better fuel burn, the better explosion inside our engine, then explosion produce a power stroke, the better stroke, the better power deliver to our flywheel, the better power delivered to our flywheel the better power we will gain on our wheel.

I hope I did answer your question now. Remember, to mod your car for performance is NOT just replace your intake or put up a BIG and noise exhaust. It is all about the over all performance and how we squeeze our engine performance out. JDM ITR DC2 is the best example.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

 

i think the only conclusion that can be reached is... the Canada West forums are weird

 

Well....they're Canadian...LOL

I think I see where the difference might come. Overall if it's cheap, why not. At the very least it's a dress up kit.

Basically you try to eliminate floating grounds due to current noise in the return path. Thus in the ECU, etc. you have better/more accurate measurements and signals.

But without knowing the deepest internal working of how this happens, I can't tell you if I'm right or not.

 

Well... like I said before. I don't know exactly why. Neither do people on RSX forum.
But if there are any Japanese member here, they may be able to explain better, b/c it is one of the trend or "must do" in Japan.

For now, all I have is some dynos info from RSX (info from I-MOD there). He said minimal 1-2 hp gain for serveral people who did dyno on RSX. He did not mention torque tho....
Also, by measuring with a volt meter, the grounding path improved by approx. 3 times on TSX. But what is it gonna do? or nth? I have no clue.

 

yay 10 minutes of my life gone

 

Hahaa... becoz we lived in Wild Wide WEST, we can tune our HORSE to RUN MUCH FASTER then a TRAIN on from the EAST.

"Do you know where I from? From Wild Wide West"....Sigh~~!

heheeee.....

 

This a good one


Bender

 

ypou guys all made good points, but no one metions about the load the alternator creates or takes, for those off you that have removed you ac or power steering pump for more hourse pwoer, you can see the same thing happning when you are reducing the load on your alernator, which takes power from the engine.

yes it's more like recover the hp you lost..i've seen +1-2hp, but maninly just help the car run smoother, idle better, lights and start up flicker less etc..

 

Grounding wires = more horsepower because, it redirects the electricity either from battery or lightening to the ground, instead of passing on from the aluminum shift nod to human body, countacting an interference with neurotransmitter that causes numbing sensation and unnoticeably slow reflection time, or simple preventing you from fucking up the brain.

 

hmm..... ^^^^^^ very good example that you don't have ground wire in your car if what you said is true. ROFL