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System grounding

  • Thread starter Thread starter Indysteve
  • Start date Start date
I

Indysteve

Guest
I am grateful for the numerous ideas and help that I have received from this site that I wanted to pass along a mod I made that others may be interested in.

I have read most if not all the posts by posplayr and grounding in general.
I am in the low-voltage cabling business and grounding plays a big part in my everyday work.
Data centers all use a centralized grounding system that grounds to a central point and most utilize a buss bar as that central point.

I was surfing one day looking for connectors and other electrical parts when I came across this from WholesaleMarine dot com:
Sea Dog Bakelite Buss Bar - 10 Terminal

The unit two 1/4" lugs, one at each end, and 10 screw terminals arrayed between the lugs.
The bar is mounted in a plastic base that has two mounting holes near the ends.

I ordered this without thinking where I might mount it.
When it showed up I found that it is the same length as my battery box.

I bolted the whole unit to the side of the battery box.

I ran 2 #8 stranded copper cables from the 1/4" posts on each end to both the engine casing and the battery negative.
Since the bar is mounted to the side of the battery box I just crimped an eyelet to the ground of the R/R and attached that to the large post as well.

I removed all the stock eyelets from all system grounds and then brought them all to the buss bar with new connections.
I also ran a new ground from the bar to the starter solenoid and another to the R/R base.

This has accomplished the single point ground that posplayr has been a proponent of ;), and I believe relieves the crowded feel to the single point connection at the r/r.

Unfortunately I am sitting in a hotel room 250 miles from my bike so pictures will have to wait.

Total cost of parts was around 20$ as the buss bar was only 9.50 but shipping was almost as much from Wholesale Marine.

Testing showed that at any point in the system I had a maximum of .02 ohms of resistance:clap:

I coupled this mod with adding a 80mm cooling fan from a PC power supply to the R/R for cooling.
I ran the power for the fan with the black "sense" wire from my Honda R/R and attached the ground directly to the buss bar.

I tested the whole setup in 5 minute intervals and found no heat buildup.:cool:

Hopefully this will be a help to others!!
 
That sounds really great. Any chance you could post pictures of the connections you made?

I can wrench, but am hopeless with electricity.
 
Indysteve said:
I coupled this mod with adding a 80mm cooling fan from a PC power supply to the R/R for cooling.
I ran the power for the fan with the black "sense" wire from my Honda R/R and attached the ground directly to the buss bar.
I tested the whole setup in 5 minute intervals and found no heat buildup.:cool:Hopefully this will be a help to others!!
Click to expand...
I REALLY like your ideas and would appreciate some clarification re: powering the fan, along with its location. Does the fan turn on as needed or is it on whenever the engine is running?
Thanks alot for posting what you did.
Willie
 
I REALLY like your ideas and would appreciate some clarification re: powering the fan, along with its location. Does the fan turn on as needed or is it on whenever the engine is running?
Click to expand...
Hey Willie....

The fan is wired to the "sense" wire from the R/R, so it is hot when the ignition switch is turned on.
The beauty of the PC power supply fan is that it draws MAYBE .5 amps and more likely to draw closer to .25 amps.

This aids in cooling similar to the PC processor cooling, forced air over the fins to lower the ambient temperature.
These fans cool the power supply in a PC and are generally rated at 20cfm.

I suppose the next logical step would be to attach a thermostat control to the power leads of the fan and if the cooling fins reach x temperature then the fan would turn on:-k
I like the other side of the equation as well and that is what posplayr did with his R/R, he used a copper heat-sink to help wick the heat away from the unit.
Heat is the worst enemy of electronics parts:(

Any chance you could post pictures of the connections you made?
Click to expand...
Yes, as soon as I am back in town I will snap some pictures to post.

I, like many others, learn best from the pictorial view!!
 
Indysteve said:
I like the other side of the equation as well and that is what posplayr did with his R/R, he used a copper heat-sink to help wick the heat away from the unit.
Heat is the worst enemy of electronics parts:(


!
Click to expand...

The SERIES R/R largely obviates any of the R/R thermal issues. The SHUNT R/R's are the ones that are much more susceptible while also making the stator more vulnerable. In fact it is the FET SHUNT , with it's reduced voltage drops that makes the stator work harder to keep cool (usually unsuccessfully :o).
 
My stator fried which gave me down time while waiting for parts so I decided to take on the single point ground project. I ordered the same buss bar from the same ebay seller, it arrived in good time and below are the pictures of mine.

I decided the rust on the battery box had to go so I painted the box and cleaned everything up.
IMG_2054.jpg


Another view
IMG_2051.jpg


Mock up with the "new to me" 2006 CBR R/R from ebay
IMG_2056.jpg
 
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