Hyper Ground kits

[David]

I have seen tree or four magazine tests of those HyperGround systems that are so popular in Japan right now, and they have all been very positive. I was going to get some heavy duty stereo cable and some good connectors and install something like that on my car, but first I wanted to ask if anyone had tried it.

So, anyone out there given it a shot yet?

 

[Zishan]

Never heard of them? What are they?

 

[SpankyPop]

I know taht the Hyper Grounding systems have been proven to do nothing in integras. I would assume that this is the same for NSX's, but I cannot be positive. I will search for the information I have and get back to you.

 

[SpankyPop]

By Michael Deleany

Tommy Gunns now sells his own kit for $42 US shipped, if you don't feel like doing this yourself. It's definitely not the rip off cost of $200 US for those JDM earthing (messed up Japanese translation of the english word ground) system.

I would not hold my breath about the claimed hp gains on the JDM earthing systems.

email: tommy_gunns@hotmail.com.


Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There has been some interest in purchasing an earthing system that I would make for you.

Price will be $42 USD shipped (via Paypal) to anywhere in North America.

DISCLAIMER:
1. The kit includes: black 8 gauge wires cut for direct bolt on, 6 gold plated terminals, 1 engine block bolt, 4 zip ties, and crude instructions
2. Earthing System is sold as is. All sales are final.
3. The length of wires will be made for G3 integras, more specifically the ITR. May work for other Honda vehicles equipped with battery by passenger side window and B series motor.
4. For a clean install, you will need a strut tower bar of some kind.
5. Product will be shipped insured via Canada Post.
6. Buyer assumes all responsibility after arriving at their door. This includes: faulty installation, misuse of the product and/or any electrical failure due to the installation of the earthing system.

I will be using some sort of car audio power wire brand.
IE: Lightning Audio, Scorche, Monster, etc.

The ones I would be making would have 8 gauge wire instead of 4 shown above. 8 gauge wire is what all the JDM companies are using. I wish I used 8 cause 4 is HUGE.
For some people, they don't have the time or means to make an earthing system of their own. I'm merely providing a cheaper alternative to the $100 Spoon or whatever they are considering.

As for proof of gains, I don't have any. Those URL's that I linked to were NOT created by me. I am NOT claiming that it adds hp or trq, I just linked them to this thread cause they were the ones I could find on the net that explained the basic concept behind such systems.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What exactly are the claims of the wires? I am very skeptical about anything that will give me power by changing the electrical system. You get power by bringing in more air and fuel (Volumetric Efficency), burning it better (higher compression), and getting the spent gasses out better. [Note: also reducing amout of parasitic loss] The only place electronic modifications can add to that system is in the ignition area. As such, I can guarentee you that as long as you arenot running forced induction/n2o, your stock ignition system is fine. Grounding wires, as I see, will add power by none of those means. Sorry for the long post, I think I kind of rambled on as well.


anotehr quote by MD

wanna see some real JDM bling bling hype on grounds or "Earthing systems" as the Japanese call it? ...from you know where....

http://www.sunautomobile.com/hypergroundsystem/hgs_pro.htm

yes and it makes 4 whp! The Area51 guys who are out where SurferX lives swear by these hyperground systems and say the dynos don't lie.

if you believe that and want to spend $119 US for a pretty colored ground wire, then you must be richer than me because I sure as hell won't be spending my hard earned money on that...again, back to the basics: how do we make big power with the biggest bang for the buck?
more air in, better burn (efficiency and speed), and better removal of the burnt stuff. it's like the ignition system hype...history repeats itself.

So yes, if you lay out the ground wire on both corners of the block properly there is a benefit but don't go expecting hype gains....BTW you can do this on your own


thanks to Tommy Gunns who posted this over at you know where....

 

[David]

Originally posted by SpankyPop:
I know taht the Hyper Grounding systems have been proven to do nothing in integras. I would assume that this is the same for NSX's, but I cannot be positive. I will search for the information I have and get back to you.

Well, I have seen three major magazine tests in the last six months that claim otherwise. They were all on dynos and all showed measurable (3- 5hp) improvements.

I don't know what could be confusiing about the basic principal - they ground your cars electrical system better. This is a difficult thing to do and if you hook up test instruments to your car and run it, I think you will be surprised at how much noise/interference/bad grounding you find. A true constant ground means all of the engine management systems run more accurately, from the ECU to the sensors.

 

[Honda4Life]

I may be being too general as I cant remember the particulars about the performance details....But for the most part I have heard that the performance gains are usually made with turbocharged applications...I have some friends with built WRXs that swear by the hyper ground kits...

Just my $.02

 

[nsxhk]

A little improvement here, a little there, they all add up! But I do agree that the Japanese wires are a bit expensive tho. I think any good amp power cable will do.

 

[Lud]

My thinking is the same as nsxhk - if there is a benefit to be had from improving the grounding, how are these kits better than just running some stereo power cable?

I have to admit I am a little skeptical about gains unless there was a ground problem to begin with, particularly claims about the ECU or other computer components that either work or don't without a whole lot of middle ground.

I am also skeptical that, unless there is an actual grounding problem, more grounding wires are the best place to improve the "noise" in a car's electrical system. A filter after the alternator and some big capacitors in front of the spark plugs seems more obvious.

But I try to remain open minded and would like to learn more. I would specifically be interested to see the measured electrical improvement. Can you point me to an independent source for that?

 

[David]

First, as you can see by my original post, I have no intention of buying the over-priced kit from Sun. As I stated, if I do this I will just buy some heavy-gauge stereo cable and good connectors.

Second, when these came out, I almost laughed at them I thought they were so silly. The Engrish name didn't help (super earth systems). But, having seen several tests with good results, I have become a bit more open to the idea. I wish I could dig up the issues, but I don't keep mags for very long. I do remember they were pretty ordinary cars (mildly modded Teg or Civic) and they showed gains of several hp. Thought it was interesting.

 

[Ojas]

Wow, this is certainly interesting. I'm sure it's safe to say that a production car's ground can be improved but...

This graph does not seem right if they are trying to compare relative difference in conductance (holding length and cross-sectional area constant).

This graph indicates that aluminum is ~33% as conductive (has 3 times the resistance) as copper. I don't have my chem/elec. books from school in front of me, but according to this, aluminum is ~55% as conductive (has 1.8 times the resistance) as copper. So there is a pretty big error in the graph for aluminum. Don't know about steel, but what do we care?

Even decreasing the resistance by a factor of 10 should not have much of an impact on the system (unless you have a very bad ground to begin with)... I don't know what the resistance in the ground is, but say it is 1/100 of an ohm. And even if you give this system the benefit of the doubt and say it reduces resistance to 1/1000 of an ohm, this is probably not a big deal unless you're planning on hooking up your ride with a mad (1000W+) system.

What I'm most curious about is what they are attributing the improved performance engine to! I can only think of 3 possible causes:

1) The reduced resistance from the wire reduces the load on the alternate, thereby reducing the load on the engine, which improves performance - very unlikely... Since even if you could free up 1 hp (768W) in this scenerio, this means the original electrical system would have had 768W lost thru the wiring alone! It's not very likely that the wiring could surive the heat and even less likely that the main electrical components would even function!

2) The factory electrical system has so much noise that the operation that the ECU and other electronics can't operate the engine properly. - This seems unlikely since the such a condition would trip the check engine light, etc.

3) The ground in the factory electrical system is the "bottleneck" in delevering power to the ignition system. Improving this bottleneck results in a bigger spark and better performance - Dunno, this seems unlikely, too.

There's no doubt... installing there system will improve resistance, since (from what I understand, it is installs in parallel with the existing ground) resistance can only go down.

I'm not bashing anyone and am hardly close to an expert when it comes to electrical systems, but based on what little I know, I find their claims suspicious.

------------------
ojaspatel.com/nsx

[This message has been edited by Ojas (edited 30 January 2003).]

 

[Ojas]

Haha, I just noticed something...

They claim to "...have 10 times less impedance than factory ground systems..." (impedance, not resistance) They make no mention of what frequency this is at, but it's probably not important anyway, since it's only used in a DC application.

Still interesting.

------------------
ojaspatel.com/nsx

[This message has been edited by Ojas (edited 30 January 2003).]

 

[David]

The responses are pretty much why I made the initial post - I am a bit confused as to how it is doing what it is doing, but the mag tests seem to confirm it in actual dyno comparisions.

I couldn't find the first two tests I saw, but (concidence) the current Import Tuner does a hyper ground install as part of a WRX upgrade article. According to them, it produced an increase of 1.2hp and 10.9ft/lbs at the rear wheels. Go figure.

I am pretty sure that the earlier tests I saw were on NA cars. Think they showed something like 3 - 5 hp at the wheels.

Anyway, the next time I pull my engine, I think I will get some heavy copper cable and try it out.

 

[sjs]

I'm a born skeptic on such things. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the "lesser" magazines will allow themselves to be duped to get a good article or support their advertisers and keep the whole "tuner" market hot.

And yet, I remain open to this having merit in some cases. Import Tuner actually did a full article on the subject and found that something like 3 of 5 cars had clear gains. I have no idea how reliable they are, but it got me thinking. Remember why the new AEM was so slow coming to market for our cars? What I heard was problems with "noise" filtering. I'd like more details on that. I would not agree that an ECU either works or doesn't. There are many sensor measurements going on that influence fuel metering and ignition timing. Introduce a high "error rate" into those readings and it seems to me HP is likely to suffer.

I do think that a new car, especially a car such as an NSX, is provided with an adequate ground. Auto makers are not total idiots. But as time goes by that too deteriorates. When was the last time you cleaned the contacts of your existing cables and ground straps? Can a better ground improve the spark? Let me answer it this way, a lousy ground can hurt the spark.

Something that hasn't been mentioned here is that many of the people doing this have added massive stereo amps, tv screens, and gaudy lighting to their cars, all of which greatly increase the load on the system. Those guys might stand to gain more than others.

Speaking of stereos, this is very reminiscent of many esoteric stereo products including of course speaker wire. Much of that is pure rubbish, and yet some of the least believable on the surface really do make a difference. (Though I'm often hard to convince that A is "better" than B)

 

[Lud]

You are right that a bad ground can cause problems. But you don't need any kind of kit to have a good ground, you just need a good ground! You need to start with a proper baseline before you can say something has improved on it.

The ECU itself, as with other computers, has a very slim margin between working and not working as far as electrical issues go. The SENSORS that feed into the ECU may react differently. But again unless there is a grounding problem, there seem to be many better places to "clean up" the power in a car.

I do not believe 1 or 2 HP dyno gains to validate anything; that is within the margin of error inherent in the measurement process.

I would still like to hear reasonable scientific explanation of how the kit may improve performance, because while I am skeptical I would also be happy to learn more.

 

[David]

I talked to a freind of mine who is an editor at Sport Compact Car and he is going to do a test on them. Will let you know what happens.

 

[David]

Just got the new Turbo mag and they did yet another test on these things. REsults are:

2002 Suzuki Aerio -> plus 3.9 hp

2002 Honda S2000 -> plus 2.1 hp

1995 Mazda RX-7 -> plus 15.3 hp

Go figure.