Chassis vs dedicated ground runs

[Lbetts818]

I know this is kind of opening a Pandora’s box here, and the answers will probably be 50/50. But currently I have two runs of positive and negative front battery to back battery. It’s that time of year where I start cleaning up and fixing things that took a beating last summer in my truck waiting for it to get warm out and was thinking(which can be dangerous) about making all 4 runs into positives and grounding amps and batt in the rear to the chassis. 4 runs would probably be over kill. Have a singer 270a alt, big 4, huge Duralst agm under the hood, juice box yellow battery in the rear. Amps will be a (don’t judge we’ve all owned ct sounds and are not proud)ct 75.4, a c1100.4 and a ia 20.1 wired in the dirt at.4(no I do not need to be told that’s too low, the amp will take it) I’m just curious if you guys have better voltage with dedicated grounds or chassis grounds. Thanks in advance for the info.

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[Jski1990]

I would think that the dedicated ground wire would be better as copper is a better conductor than steel

 

[tymoto21 10+ year member]

I saw a test years ago that showed a frame chassis was good up to around 7-8k

After that dedicated grounds improved voltage drop

Iirc it was between 3 and 4 runs that the chassis was

But that was not a unibody car so take that into consideration

Either way you are only running what 4K?

2 pos 2 neg is more than enough

 

[Jeffro83]

On big builds I always bolt my big three grounds to the frame up front by the engine and then run ground lines off of the same bolts I used for Big 3 / up front grounds two rear battery usually same number of runs of ground as there are positive that away alternator upfront battery and rear battery Bank are all grounded to the same place on the frame and engine block and all grounded to each other

 

[shredder2]

Frame and copper

 

[Lbetts818]

Issue with going right to the frame is it’s michigan. There’s all kinds of salt and water in the winter and will be replacing wires and lugs on annual basis if going that route. Thanks for the input though guys. I’ll probably just leave it how it is and run it. I was just thinking 2-3ft long grounds would be better than 17-20ft grounds.