W-T ground mod

[wil440]

Yes same here 150amp resettable fuse, drove the truck for the first time today since doing the mod, no difference at all but my truck hadn't got a problem with AC noise anyway

[larbow]

Let me apologize  for the photos being out of order. But I started on the ground mod earlier today. You can see that I connected the alternator  cable to the passenger side battery along with a 150 amp circuit breaker. In one of the photos you can see a connector next to the battery, the wires in that connection are grounds, there are four of them I believe. They are all on the passenger side. I thought the grounds I needed to slice together were on the drivers side? Can someone elaborate on this? Tomorrow I am going to unwrap the harness going across the front of the engine and try to finish this modification.

If it makes a difference  my truck is a 1999. I just put in a Nations 180 amp alternator, my old one was putting out .093 ac noise and smoked my ecm, I just got my ecm back from ACS. Right now I'm getting .038 AC noise, but I would like to get it lower. I have no tuners on this truck, the only thing not stock is the alternator  and a raptor lift pump. Thank you for any input you may have.

[W-T]

On 6/22/2019 at 9:40 PM, larbow said:

They are all on the passenger side. I thought the grounds I needed to slice together were on the drivers side? Can someone elaborate on this?

 

You will find a companion thread by @IBMobile...where Dan has delved deeper into the unconventional splicing of grounds near the PCM on the passenger side firewall. You are on the correct path to accomplishing the correction. Your statement that your truck is in stock condition...observe the negative terminal on the passenger side and trace the ground leads back under the factory air-cleaner box. Take a look at what Dan has presented in his thread...you will then have corrected both the passenger side (PCM) and the drivers side (ECM, VP44 ect.) The shrink-tubing covering both unconventional splicing (drivers, passenger side) are both filled with a non-hardening adhesive...it is most unimpressive and needs to be corrected.

 

My compliments on your work...it looks excellent along with the connectors and yellow heavy Gage lines 

 

W-T    

[JAG1]

After talking with W-T on the telephone yesterday he convinced me of the importance of having the best parallelling possible with both batteries and improving the connection between them. Because the Charge wire is going a shorter distance from the alternator to the passenger battery and because the level of charge, determined by the temperature sensor, is on the drivers side battery, It is most important to add a proper equalization between the two. Important during discharges and during the charge phase for both batteries to be properly balanced sense it will diminish the life of the batteries to have one constantly undercharged and the other always overcharged depending on conditions. This is also important during battery draw down cycles such as during grid heater use which will make worse the already out of balance system. 

So adding the 4 ought wire between neg to neg batteries (is important) and I know a lot of you, like me, have skipped that portion of W-T's requirements.

 

My recent experience with a super heated smoking alternator in which the poor thing was trying so hard to feed a shorted passenger battery, further supports this need to help prevent this worse case scenario from happening. I am lucky my PCM is not damaged.

 

Thanks again W-T you are a wealth of information to us all. I can only hope that the gravitational pull is much lighter on you, after all that has happened there in Paradise Ca.

Edited July 22, 2019 by JAG1

[Mopar1973Man]

Keep your terminals oiled. I'm still running the factory cables and no issues as of 17 years later. 

[dripley]

8 hours ago, JAG1 said:

After talking with W-T on the telephone yesterday he convinced me of the importance of having the best parallelling possible with both batteries and improving the connection between them. Because the Charge wire is going a shorter distance from the alternator to the passenger battery and because the level of charge, determined by the temperature sensor, is on the drivers side battery, It is most important to add a proper equalization between the two. Important during discharges and during the charge phase for both batteries to be properly balanced sense it will diminish the life of the batteries to have one constantly undercharged and the other always overcharged depending on conditions. This is also important during battery draw down cycles such as during grid heater use which will make worse the already out of balance system. 

So adding the 4 ought wire between neg to neg batteries (is important) and I know a lot of you, like me, have skipped that portion of W-T's requirements.

 

My recent experience with a super heated smoking alternator in which the poor thing was trying so hard to feed a shorted passenger battery, further supports this need to help prevent this worse case scenario from happening. I am lucky my PCM is not damaged.

 

Thanks again W-T you are a wealth of information to us all. I can only hope that the gravitational pull is much lighter on you, after all that has happened there in Paradise Ca.

As I remeber when I replaced my battery cables there was already a + wire between the two pre mod. I replaced it along with the other OE battery cables with 2/0 cable. Not long after that I did WT's grounf mod. One wire I did not add was an additional ground cable between the 2 batteries that I heard mentioned later. I did not remember seeing that in the original description of the mod, but heard from others that it should be done. I did add a #4 ground across the radiator between the 2 battaries.

 

I know WT has a boat of extra elctrical demand on his truck due to radios and what not so I question the need for a 4/0. I am thinking he needs that on his due to the extra electrical demands that he has. I do agree they should tied together as they were in the OE state and the extra ground cant hurt any thing.

Edited July 22, 2019 by JAG1

[larbow]

Thank you for answering my questions. It was a huge help.

On another topic. If I understand this right, I should run a cable from the drivers side battery negative terminal to the passenger side battery negative terminal?

[dripley]

1 hour ago, larbow said:

Thank you for answering my questions. It was a huge help.

On another topic. If I understand this right, I should run a cable from the drivers side battery negative terminal to the passenger side battery negative terminal?

That's  the recomendation.

[larbow]

Cool! Thank you very much.

[larbow]

Here another question. 

So I replaced my factory alternator with a Nations 180amp alternator. Between the alternator and battery I put a 150 circuit breaker. That trips almost everytime I start the truck. Batteries are new. I'm thinking possible cheap breaker that can't handle it's rated amount of amps or should I install a 180amp breaker?

[Mopar1973Man]

Yes you need about 200 amp breaker. You want some breathing room. The Grid heater will still push that to full load so the breaker has to be above the maximum amp rating of the alternator.

 

The breaker is not for the charging amperage. It for the total shorted amperage which is typically above the alternator rating. That why I didn't buy a 140 amp breaker for mine and bought a 150 amp breaker. 

[JAG1]

On 8/19/2019 at 4:24 PM, larbow said:

Thank you for answering my questions. It was a huge help.

On another topic. If I understand this right, I should run a cable from the drivers side battery negative terminal to the passenger side battery negative terminal?

W-T's write up on this subject got lost and is no longer available. Know one seems to know how some very important information that helped so many just up an vanished, but W-T isn't happy as it took a lot of hours and work to write those  i.e. the grounding mods that reduce AC ripple and reducing additional AC noise from aftermarket lift pumps. Unfortunately, because of this loss W-T no longer wants to participate in our forums.

             A recent conversation with W-T revealed that in order to properly balance both batteries, he wants to see two negative cables and one more positive cable added between the batteries. It was my mistake to say you only need to add one negative parallel cable.

 

IF ANYONE HAPPENED TO MAKE COPIES OF W-T's WRITE UPS PLEASE LET ME KNOW.... Thank You.

Edited August 31, 2019 by JAG1

[larbow]

That you for the answers to my questions, the help is greatly appreciated.

[Mopar1973Man]

@JAG1

 

The only thing I can think of was data was lost during the server move. Remember we upgraded servers back in winter of 2019. As for the lost section there is nothing I can do. The website is so massive that I can only hold 1 copy of the website for one day. Then a new backup is created the next morning. Since its not just found there is nothing I can do to recover this data. The only thing I could hope for is @W-T to repost the missing data for us. I know he was part of the California fire (Paradise Valley) and he lost all his stuff in the fire. Either way I look at it its gone nothing either one can do unless @W-T would be gracious and replace that missing section.  

 

 

So the only thing I can do at this point is say "I'm sorry for the loss of data" and move on. I don't have a magic wand to roll back time, I don't have endless resources. Just sorry it happened. 

[JAG1]

I understand Mike.

[IBMobile]

That data is still there.  It's the pictures that are missing.

 

 

[015point9]

  I couldn't get pic's to upload, so I uploaded as file from my cpu.  Maybe somebody (with computer skills could do any formatting????

 

On my computer I can open attached file as word doc.  Not sure about others.  Let me know if this works.  

 

And if possible somebody add the pic with added battery cable(s)

 

 

Ground Reference VP44 ECM PCM PDC plus TC lock unlock wt mod.docx

Edited September 2, 2019 by 015point9
aaa

[JAG1]

Thank you to both of you for helping. W-T is pretty good guy around here. We don't want to lose his participation and valuable info. It's helped many of us so much.... we can be proud of our trucks, getting them to go beyond the normal level of reliability . That's what this site and Mopar1973Man is all about. I have to admit though sometimes he gets on a big power trip.... horsepower trip that is 

  

[IBMobile]

I was able to insert the pictures from the Word document into both the article and forum where @W-T writeup is posted.   I was unable to remove the grayed out areas where the original pictures were.

Thank you @015point9 for the Word doc. 

[015point9]

To be back to what w-t posted...

Don't we have to put that one picture of the battery cables that was at the very end that got cut off?  Who has that pic?