Hi

Hopefully this weekend will see the car started or ready to start for next week. Looking at where to connect the battery earth lead to.

Reading through the threads a lot of people seem to of fitted to the bell housing though the eyelet on the lead wont take one of the bellhousing bolts and I cant see anywhere else on the bellhousing suitable.

If it helps it's a Pinto engine with a type 9 gearbox.

Any info on best place to connect earth lead from battery to on engine/gearbox much appreciated and if any photos available so much the better.

Thanks
Nigel

i put the battery earth lead to the footwell metal plate/ chassis. then another from the footwell plate to one of the bolts on the starter motor. then just for good luck i pit one from the block to the chassis rail.

the eyelet was just smaller than the bolt but i just opened up the hole till the bolt was a snug fit.

hop all goes well

Ditch

Are there any un-used bolts on the engine? if so, use one of them...

its not essensial to use a bell housing bolt, its probably just convienient...

you need to

1) make sure the battery negative is connected to the chassis - use as short a cable as possible.
2) make sure the engine is earthed to the chassis - i usually use two earth straps, one either side of the engine. On my zetec, i have one coming off of the cylinder head, and on the drivers side, i have one coming off of the block.

make sure that the point on the engine and the point on the chassis where you bolt it to are cleaned back to bare metal. A good clean earth is essential and most "weird" wiring faults are down to bad earths.

on a pinto, there are two unused vertical bolt holes just forward of the fuel pump on the passenger side, or if the bolt holes are the right size, use one of the bolts that hold on the engine mount - just make sure that the metal to metal face is good and clean.

I used the original battery/earth leads from the Sierra. Battery lead, earth lead and starter lead all wrapped up in conduet etc.

Connected the normal positive leads to the starter and the earth lead to a spare threaded m10 on the block. The other end went to the battery for the posirtive and the earth bolted to the footwell with a short earth onto the battery.

You can see both sides of the connection in my blog.

Steve

I have a number of unused M10 threaded holes on my block, it is a 165. I stuck a bolt in one and ran a fat earth strap to the plate where my engine mount sits then ran the battery cable to the same point and stuck it all together with a well torqued up M8 after cleaning off the paint. This is pretty good. It is important to get the chassis earth path good as everything electrical depends on it. It is really amazing how much goes wrong or intermittent if you don't have a really good earth!

Caber

The starter motor draws huge currents so needs to have good connection with fat wires.

It does not have an earth connect but that is made by its body and mounting so the fat wire goes as close a poosible to the - gearbox housing is suitable.

The wiring to lamps should have their own earth return but people use the chassis for this so you need to connect chassis to battery somehow. this can be doen by connecting antoher fat wire to the gearbox housing.,

Fiuanlly engine needs to be earthed and you shouldn't rely on the bolting between engine and gearbox hoiusing - again another fat wire to gearbox housing will do it.

Ther are orfoucre variatn on this sheme as ^^^^ but the most important lead battery to starter.

Chassis or engine or geabox --- Short answer is it dosen't matter as long as the engine and chassis are also both electrically bonded by suitable heavy duty cable.