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I recently had to replace the canbus error-canceling capacitors in our W164's Morimoto HID kit and the new generations come with grounding loops (the blue wire in the following photos). When I don't ground it, the light still works fine, but I was advised by The Retrofit Source to ground it to reduce any chance of errors or malfunctions. Had a few questions:
In the following two photos, can anyone please confirm that the nuts where all the brown wires are going are indeed grounding points that I can screw the capacitors' ground into? Was also curious what these grounds are for originally if so.
Furthermore, it should be fine to mount the ballast on the bumper support bar (which is where the ground on the passenger side goes into) where they currently are, is that right?
Lastly, can anyone please confirm that it is indeed safe to add the additional ground to these points and that I won't screw up any electrical systems by doing so? Just want to make sure it's safe to have more than the factory number of ground connections for these nuts and I don't want to create any ground loops either.
Thanks!
Passenger side wheel, with the ballast mounted on the bumper support and the blue grounding wire from the capacitor visible. Looking to tap into that nut with the brown wire. Grounding point?
Driver side, just forward of the firewall, nut with a bunch of brown wires underneath it. Grounding point?
Literally any metal point on the chassis is a grounding point and you will not mess up anything by grounding there as long as you don't disconnect any wires.
The thread is in the correct forum. Reading the post will actually help
I read the post. Where on his opening post does he mention a 2008 ML350? He just says W164? If that is good enough for you as a Super Moderator, you should be knocked down a notch.
I read the post. Where on his opening post does he mention a 2008 ML350? He just says W164? If that is good enough for you as a Super Moderator, you should be knocked down a notch.
You don't need to know the specific model of a car to answer a simple grounding question...
Literally any metal point on the chassis is a grounding point and you will not mess up anything by grounding there as long as you don't disconnect any wires.
Thanks, that's great to know!
For anyone else reading this thread in the future, I learned that the brown wires in MB usually are ground wires and those nuts that they sit under are indeed factory ground points. You can loosen the nut and screw in another ground on those, just be careful not to drop the nut in the bay or inadvertently disconnect any of the other wires.
The Morimoto Canbus capacitors' ground ring is too small to go into the ground point that I show in the first photo. I ended up just sandwiching it in that space between the beams from the chassis and the bumper (the tiny gap below the zip tie). It sits in there nice and snug and it works fine. As Tsumi helpfully pointed out, the chassis at other points in the bay would work if the ring won't fit in any other grounding points; I only had to do the passenger side, so take that advice for the driver's side (second photo) if you need to ground something there.
This should work regardless of which engine is under the hood as the chassis is the same
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Grounding points in engine bay?
