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Fixing Earthing Problems - Why and How

Buellxb Forum

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Make that 12g a twisted pair. In other words, take 2 pieces of wire, put 2 ends in a drill chuck, get a hold of the opposite ends and run the drill so there are about 2 twists per inch. Viola, a twisted pair. Stranded needs to be secured along the length with heat shrink or wrapped with tape. Solid wire will stay put.
 
Make that 12g a twisted pair. In other words, take 2 pieces of wire, put 2 ends in a drill chuck, get a hold of the opposite ends and run the drill so there are about 2 twists per inch. Viola, a twisted pair. Stranded needs to be secured along the length with heat shrink or wrapped with tape. Solid wire will stay put.

Perfect. I was wondering if that will work. I will try it out since I have a coil of 12 gauge at home. Thank you. May not fix issues but it'll help with peace of mind.
 
Updated the grounds on sons firebolt. Picked up a 4 ga battery cable at O'Riley's for $9 with connectors on both ends. 24" worked a charm going from the braided ground to Bat Neg. Connected the cable to the left side (sitting on bike) braided connection point routed through the right side rear sub-frame and tupperware to battery. Youo can do this in less than 10 minutes.

Sad to say i was overzealous cleaning the connections and removed the aluminum coating on the braided connectors. Going to see if I can dip it in a silver concoction from an electronics store.
 
This whole thread is nuts, lol. Yes, you need a good ground path... but the overkill has gotten WAY out of hand.

Wire doubles in size at the next lower gauge number, so to answer your question cocoabutterlover: Technically, (2) 10 gauge wires make an 8 gauge wire.

Lengths less than 4 feet of 8 ga wire can hold up to 150 amps at 13.8 volts, 90*F. Thats just about what the whole dang starter draws and 4 gauge? Over 300 amps!. Thats only 100 times where you'd already see a problem in a circuit and have to fix it. Silliness.
http://www.offroaders.com/technical/12-volt-wiring-tech-gauge-to-amps/

Remember, you are not making a circuit. You are supplementing a ground path. The circuit exists already to hold all that current.

All this fun aside, I would LOVE to see some actual testing. It's easy, and free! Before you go all cray-cray with 4 gauge high strand welding wire and 24 carat solid gold connectors... Use your free Harbor Freight DVOM and measure amps between the points you would like to add that wire. Start the bike, rev it up, hit the lights, and look for a reading.

IF you see a reading past 1 amp, repair the ground path of the circuit that makes that reading when activated or add an appropriately sized wire at those testing points for the amp reading you got. It would be much smaller than 28 gauge (human hair-ish lol) for just 1 amp but IMO, motorcycles don't like wiring less than 16 gauge. You're still jamming crap under the seat right?

I found a 1 amp current between the coil mounting bolt and battery negative on my STT. I cleaned the bolt and mount and it went away but...'LAF' Lunatics Awesome Fix. I added a 16 gauge wire anyway:)

Glad these bikes don't have stereos with all these ground loops everyones making! :love_heart:
Great write up John, no offense intended. Just trying to get the theory off of Planet Aspergers and back into reality:up:
 
Well for some feedback; I installed new intake seals; bike ran funny. I took apart my TPS and cleaned it, re-installed it, ran extra ground wires. Took the bike out last night, it ran smoother while the fuse/relay box under the seat was just warm to the touch as opposed to HOT a week before. So at least it helped with that.
 
I'm not saying adding grounds is a bad idea. I'm saying that electrons are not a mysterious unpredictable substance in the Ether that have to be corralled with the magical copper tubing and witches blood.

Electricity has rules*. Predictable, simple, repeatable, rules. If you learn those simple rules, there's no guessing.

Guessing is bad, because it is expensive, time consuming, and frustrating.


*Electricity can be bad for motorcyclists!
https://kste.iheart.com/content/201...clist-dies-after-getting-struck-by-lightning/
 
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After thorough cleaning of grounds, i still have misfire. any other thing to be on the lookout for?

1. I have a wire from the braided earth strap to negative on battery
2. Cleaned the grounds from the fuse to body
3. cleaned the negative battery terminal/grounds also
4. cleaned grounds at the headlight section also

Could not locate any grounds around the 02sensor my bike is a 2009 xb9sx.

Should i add an extra cable from fuse ground to negative terminal on battery?

What else can i be missing?
 
There is no such thing as a "fuse ground". All your fuses are on the positive side of the circuit. Running any ground to any fuse on your bike would be catastrophically bad.

I would not run any extra wires to the ground terminal of the battery, I would run them to where that 4ga wire attaches to the seat frame.

And maybe thats not the problem causing the misfire at all...
 
Samuelsegg
Don't see in your list of things you've done that you've connected the earths bolted to the alloy subframe back to the battery (or a solid lead that goes to the battery).
Don't know how yours is wired but some models bolt critical earths (like the ECM earths) to the Left hand side of the subframe and the battery to the RHS. The subframe is 2 halves bolted together at the back of the seat and to the main frame. This leaves bolted alloy connections to carry the earth return from the ECM back to the battery.
Its these alloy connections that are the cause of all the earth faults that plague XB's.
The guts of my original post was to replace all the wiring loom to aluminium alloy connections with properly sized copper/nickel/solder/brass ones, which don't corrode nearly as badly as alloy, and then protect them from further water ingress.
The the Oxygen sensor is earthed through the exhaust header to the cylinder head and so becomes part of the current the braided strap carries. I've wondered whether the earth on the O2 sensor is good enough, neither stainless steel nor the header clamp are particularly good conductors. People replace them because they're supposedly faulty, but it may just be unscrewing the old and screwing in a replacement makes a better earth. You could easily run a wire from the body of the sensor back to an earth and see if it makes a difference? - jv
 
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I have read quite a lot of the history here but I'm not sure I'm capable of reading all. (something about writing a novel). but if a person is interested in improving or maintaining the condition of his machine, he might well be interested in reading a page or two.

One thing I didn't see but I'm not sure it isn't in there somewhere is the notion of "ground loops" (Earth loops). With all of the imperfect connections in an XB, there is definitely at least one ground loop. Not being smart enough, I could imagine, maybe, that the ECM could get some inaccurate information from this great combination of signals.

Maybe.
 
I have read quite a lot of the history here but I'm not sure I'm capable of reading all. (something about writing a novel). but if a person is interested in improving or maintaining the condition of his machine, he might well be interested in reading a page or two.

One thing I didn't see but I'm not sure it isn't in there somewhere is the notion of "ground loops" (Earth loops). With all of the imperfect connections in an XB, there is definitely at least one ground loop. Not being smart enough, I could imagine, maybe, that the ECM could get some inaccurate information from this great combination of signals.

Maybe.

That was my thought as well, but I dont think it actually happens in an XB.
 
This is a very general topic so I put in the most read forum even tho the subject bike is a Uly - sorry if that's not right, and can someone tell me how to get rid of the thumbnails - jv

A light throttle/low speed/moderate rpm cough or hiccup or misfire or stutter or pop or whatever you want to call it (to copy Lunatic), is a common problem on XB’s. (See his comments 4th post down on https://www.buellxb.com/forum/showthread.php?54437-Earthing-of-the-ECM). A big part of the fix is cleaning up the earthing joints from the wiring loom. What is not discussed much is WHY the corrosion causes so much trouble, or HOW to fix it so it doesn’t come back again.

WHY
The basic reason the earth joints corrode is because aluminum is actually a very reactive metal. It only seems unreactive because its covered by a thin film of nonconductive oxide, which must be breached at any electrical joint. Where aluminum touches another metal with a different reactivity (like low reactivity copper, tin, lead or their alloys) in the presence of a bit of moisture, it sets up an electrolytic corrosion cell with its own small voltages, a bit like a thermocouple. Where 2 aluminum surfaces touch and are made to carry a current (like the earth return current from starter motor through the engine and frame), that also promotes corrosion when wet and/or salty.

Using the frame to do double duty, carrying the earth return current as well its other functions, is the way Erik Buell designed the Buell. Electro-chemically, it’s just not a good idea.

In airplanes it can’t be avoided; every ounce matters. They don’t run extra ground wires and don’t normally have corrosion problems, so there must be a way of doing it properly. An RNZAF Avionics Engineer told me earth wires must have a resistance of less than 0.7 Ohm, otherwise stray voltage drops can be set up, that affect control computers and other electronics. Steps on how to do it properly are in the HOW section below.

The bit about ‘...stray voltage drops … that affect control computers…’ is important for the misfire/stutter/hiccups. The ECM reads voltage drops across the various sensors. Most sensors have their own earth return loops in the wiring harness, but 2 sensors do not; the Engine Temperature sensor and the O2 sensor. Both are earthed through the engine. If there are electrical joints that have high resistance (corroded) or if there are induced voltages, like you get in metal close to induction coils (e.g. the ignition coil mounting bracket), then the ECM reads not only the voltage drop across the sensor, but the additional drop across the dirty joints and/or any addition or subtraction of induced voltage. If this varies (as induced voltages do, or the resistance of dirty joints does when stressed by engine vibration, road bumps etc), then the ECM ‘sees’ the sensor voltage changing and compensates for it.

It’s the ECM compensating that causes the misfire etc. I believe this is why people swear an earth wire to the ignition coil mount stops misfires, when in any normal electrical wiring sense there is no need for it, as discussed here:https://www.buellxb.com/forum/showthread.php?41712-Grounding-the-coil

Also, electro-chemically, you should not rely on ANY current path through aluminum if you can avoid it. Pure aluminum is a very good conductor of electricity, but its alloys are not. That, plus joints that corrode, is why you should not run earth return currents through it.

And there are a few dodgy joints. You need to disassemble the rear end of the bike to clean the joints between the subframe and the main frame ‘…back to bright metal’, and then they are not easy to protect from road spray. For XBS's the joint between the halves of the subframe also carries current. Also, the connection from the subframe to the battery negative cable is shrouded by the cadmium plated steel battery tray. You should remove the battery tray to clean that joint properly, but most people won’t.

You can avoid all these issues by running extra earth cables/wires. The major one is a 4Awg (20mm2) cable from the frame side of the braided earth strap, at the top anti-vibration mount above the engine, back to the battery negative terminal.
View attachment 10167 View attachment 10170
Note the two extra wires in the lug at the anti-vibration mount end in the RH picture above; one runs forward to the earth point on the steering head, and another shorter one, connects to the rear coil mounting bolt.

This means all earth return currents from the rear cylinder head back to the battery are carried through copper wires and nickel- or solder-covered copper or brass lugs, directly to the lead negative terminal. All these metals have close enough reactivities, so corrosion cells are not an issue.

The earth return current from the lights, horn and instruments also flow through low reactivity joints and any induced voltage in the coil bracket is quashed. A short wire between the 2 bolted earth points in the left-hand side of the rear subframe as shown on a Uly below, means other sundry earth return currents, are also routed through low reactivity joints. Edit: XBS's have the ECM grounded on one side of the rear sub-frame and the battery on the other. That makes an extra earth wire between the ECM ground point on one sub-frame half and the battery negative cable ground point on the other side VERY VERY important.
View attachment 10168
All these earth joints are still connected to aluminum, but don’t NEED the aluminum as a current path.

If you were OCD about it, you’d run an earth return from both the Engine Temp and O2 sensors, but engine vibration would be a problem and the above works. However, if you suspect a dud ET or O2 sensor, maybe try earthing it directly before replacing it??? Edit:Like this 2nd last post on this thread https://www.buellxb.com/forum/showthread.php?53215-Fan-not-running-hmmmmm!/page3&highlight=Live+Data

Hi and thank you for the guide! A question, where did you Travel the extra wire from the braided strap to the steering head earth? I Wanna do it as much hide I can, i Wanna go between frame and Engine, then fix it to the clutch cable, but i dont know if the heat Will damage it. Could you or someone else that done it before post some picture?
 
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