What exactly is grounding an inverter.

**Jcarere** · 09-30-2005, 07:06 AM

Ok I have my carputer running off a 400 watt vector inverter. When people say they have to ground the inverter is that grounding the case of the inverter. ie the alluminum heatsink or is this refering to the actual positive and negative grounds for the inveter electronics themselves. Just wondering.

Jcarere

**roadhog** · 09-30-2005, 07:43 AM

Don't ground the positive unless you have a camera handy

Ground the case with nice short thick cable to the vehicle chassis.

**sdashiki** · 09-30-2005, 10:48 AM

Didnt your inverter come with install instructions?

the inverter shouldnt even turn on if you wired it wrong, or explode. LOL, but it would have exploded while you were installing it!

I dont believe you actually thought of attaching a wire to the heatsink as a ground, how would you have attached it!?

any "(-) ground" in a car setting refers to the cars chassis. The battery under the hood has its (-) terminal hooked to the cars frame, so anywhere you touch the bare metal frame of the car, you are grounded.

**Enforcer** · 09-30-2005, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by sdashiki

so anywhere you touch the bare metal frame of the car, you are grounded.

So that's why my dad was always saying "you touch my car, and you are grounded son."

**joeblaga** · 09-30-2005, 02:55 PM

ive been confused about this to
when i put my inverter in, im using the cigarette lighter. i had the choice of either the cigarette lighter chords, or the battery jumper style chords.
how are u supposed to ground it with that setup?

**Jcarere** · 09-30-2005, 03:05 PM

one of those jumpers are positive and the other is negative. The positive needs to be run off a wire leading to your battery under the hood the other goes to the chassis ground. I know how to hook up an inverter its just that people always say ground your inverter. And I always thought it would not work unless it was grounded. Any way i was saying about the aluminum case of the inverter atached the chassis by drilling a small hole in one of the fins and taping it (threading) and attaching a ground wire from that to the car chassis along with the actually electrical ground.

**Will Albers** · 09-30-2005, 03:21 PM

Originally Posted by joeblaga

ive been confused about this to
when i put my inverter in, im using the cigarette lighter. i had the choice of either the cigarette lighter chords, or the battery jumper style chords.
how are u supposed to ground it with that setup?

Or not using those cords at all and picking up a few feet of 10 gauge with some crimp on eyelet connectors.

Hardwiring that invertor would be a good thing. Cigarette lighters arent designed for more than 5 amps usually, plus the are weak in their grounding.

**Will Albers** · 09-30-2005, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by Jcarere

one of those jumpers are positive and the other is negative. The positive needs to be run off a wire leading to your battery under the hood the other goes to the chassis ground. I know how to hook up an inverter its just that people always say ground your inverter. And I always thought it would not work unless it was grounded. Any way i was saying about the aluminum case of the inverter atached the chassis by drilling a small hole in one of the fins and taping it (threading) and attaching a ground wire from that to the car chassis along with the actually electrical ground.

Invertors can give off RF interference. Grounding the chassis will help eliminate some of that but it all depends on how the invertor was designed. Some float the ground, basically seperating the chassis from the power supply, others integrate it as ground.

Will it hurt anything to do it? Probably not, but you could just use a small jumper to go from the chassis to the negative terminal on the invertor. Get yourself a multi-meter and check if there is continuity between the heatsink and ground.

On my husky, there are small screws on the side that hold the side plates on. They are drilled into the heatsink. You could always just run a 3" piece of wire from that screw to the negative terminal, but i'd guess this is done interally already.

**joeblaga** · 09-30-2005, 03:50 PM

Originally Posted by Will Albers

Or not using those cords at all and picking up a few feet of 10 gauge with some crimp on eyelet connectors.

Hardwiring that invertor would be a good thing. Cigarette lighters arent designed for more than 5 amps usually, plus the are weak in their grounding.

should i worry about fusing it? or run a 10 guage wire directly from my battery to the inverter? which i can put in the back by my amp, and then ground it with another 10 guage to the same spot my amp is grounded?

oh and also, if i ground my inverter like the above method. do i need to ground the AC PSU cord that plugs into it?

**Will Albers** · 09-30-2005, 04:02 PM

12v+

Run a single large gauge wire to a distribution box near the amp. Get a 4 outlet distro block with 4 fuses. 1 to the amp, 1 to the pc and 1 to the invertor.

You will want to fuse the 4 gauge power within 12" of the battery

Ground

Get a non fused ground block so all of your grounds feed into the block and then 1 4gauge runs to the grounding point.
scrape away the pain at the grounding point and toss a lil vaseline over the top to prevent rust.

ohh almost forgot. Run a ground wire from your motherboard to the ground block. I ran a piece of wire from the scres ontop of the PCI mounts. That will ground the chassis and motherboard helping eliminate ground loops.