Why waste all that wire? You can run your positive wire from the battery terminal, and ground your amp to a bolt inside the truck. The shorter the ground the better! You can also run an extra short ground from the batterys negative post to a ground on your firewall, its not necessary but some amp manufactures recomend it as an insurance policy.

 

You also shouldnt really run your amp power wires under your truck, the insulation will break down over time! I see it all the time.

 

i ran my power through the body bolt gromet on the passenger side so i didnt have to cross the engine compartment. make sure you use a fuse under the hood to protect the power wire shorting and causing a fire. Use a fuse the same rating or high than what is in your amp. you can use a higher rating becuase you are only worried about the wire shorting to ground on its path to the amp. the amps fuses will protect itself. then i ran the power, signal, and remote wires along the passenger side under the kick panel. i would use a seat bolt for a ground there isnt any use running a ground all the way to the battery.

It's long but i wanted to explain myself

 

there is nothing wrong with running the wire under the body of your truck, if you have good wire there is no problem


please for the love of god run a positive and negative wire from the battery to the amp, its not a waste of wire, its a proven fact that the voltage and conductivity is much better when the ground is to the battery, the sound quality is much better too...i know what im saying on this one

 

I have been a certified installer for 18 years and have never ran a ground from the battery, I just don't see the point. The battery gets its ground from the chassis, why shouldn't everything else? Why run a wire 20 feet so you can tie it in at what would then essentially be a ground distribution block when you can ground it to any part of the body?

I have run return grounds to radios from amps to eliminate engine whine ground loops but that's about it.

Scrape the paint to bare metal, use a ring terminal with a star washer and screw it down with a self tapping screw. Grounded.

 

whatever slow, obvisouly you arnt taking the initiative to take your customers stereo above and beyond what you should be doing...it is a proven fact thats the end of it! there is a reason that me and the other thousands of car audio competitors do it, its better...were not doing it because we "want to waste wire" it is proven to have better voltage return and rebuild, better conductivity which in turn causes the amp to give YOU better sound

if you dont believe me then hey whatever i just feel bad for the people who you install for

 

Wow, I'm glad you took me disagreeing with you and turned it into a personal dig, thanks for that.

I'm not saying anything bad about you guy, do what you want to do. I'm just saying that conventional wisdom (outdated as it might be) follows what I said, so does logic. Can you quantify your statement that it is proven with some sort of report or technical whitepaper?

Again, this is not a personal attack against you, and if I am proven wrong then I will look into making a change in the way I do things, but if there is no actual proof then it is a waste of wire.

I'm always ready to learn something new, but lets not make this a pissing contest.

 

there is proven facts! people have taken the dmm to the thing as there was obviously some doubters, and everywhere when it was grounded to the battery was stronger! the recharge on the batteries was stronger than a ground to the i.e. frame, the sound was better to the ear not to mention a db incread on the termlab, its conductivity was also better resulting in longer playtime and less voltage drop......i dont preach this for a reason, so many people dont take the extra 20 bucks or whatever it is to make there system that much better, i cant express enough how good it really is and how much its really worth to do

 

OK, I'll have to test the theory next time I do an amp install. It still doesn't seem logical to me and reiterating that it is a proven fact still does not make it a proven fact, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and test it.

 

please post up your results....and LISTEN you can hear the sound difference as whell