grounding

hi, i was wondering if i could just use an "existing" seatbelt bolt for the ground in wire up my amp.

You could, thats what I did, but it caused me a heck of a lot of trouble...after about 3 weeks, the amp quit working, it would get a small amount of power, and then die out, moved the ground, and it works perfectly.

Anything can be used for a ground as long as you file or sand the paint of below the bolt to make a good ground, ive used the bolt for the trunk latch, seat belt bolts, and the seat mount bolts.

remember to keep the ground wire as short as possible, i'd say under 3 feet.

i only have 3 feetof cable so no problems there. and the amp is going on the back of my foldable back seats

Damn 3 feet i was always told no longer than 12", i try to keep them between 6-8" if possible.

i don't think it makes much of a difference as long as the cable is thick enough, but shorter is better.
x2 on sanding the paint off. get it nice and shiny so it makes good contact.

should i use contact cleaner on it, after i sand it down.

Id just say make sure its clean rubbing alcohol works good.

Yeah I used the bolt that is under the seat, i sanded it and it works great...

shorter tends to be better (when it comes to ground wires)

less chance for loopback distortion.

don't they make some sort of filter to get rid of that though?

i have a question, could unproper grounding cause your battery to drain faster?

Inproper grounding could make your amp quit working, not sure about the draining the battery, but it's potentially dangers to your amp.

loopback distortion ?? please explain ........

I think hes refering to ground loop distortion.

^ yes i was, sorry, my fault.

i knew what he was talking about though.

well, I still don't know wht you guys are talking about ......

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/

First thing that popped up on google.

I used to have them when i had 4 amps in my corolla, but the blazer hasnt had a problem.

I think we are talking apples and oranges ...... to carry over the analogy he is using with home/professional equipment, you would have to have several grounding points for several different amps, spread out over a 100 ft or more. We were talking of grounding just one amp in a normal sized car. Sometimes you can get loop area noise if you have more than one set of RCA's going to the back and they are routed from the headunit taking different paths. Sometimes (very rarely) you can get noise if the headunit ground is different from the ground for the next item down the chain - eq, xover, amp or whatever. This last one is not so common anymore unless one of the grounds is poor, like you didn't sand down the ground point. The real reason for making the ground as short as possible is longer wires are unneccessary and often counter productive. Since the entire frame of the will be used to complete the ground path to the battery, you will not be usinga ground wire that will even be close to the effective size of the chassis.