I am a Spaghetti Menders dealer/installer and I firmly believe in Bob Lapp's "floating ground" system. Does it add some weight? yes, but I will take the piece of mind of a properly operating electrical system vs. a few pounds.

Here is some info from the Spaghetti Menders website, please excuse the way it is written. He tried to use some humor by using his dog Noodles as the author.

"Hi my name is Noodles I'm the inventors helper - I do all the leg work. My job this week is to let you know that all the electricity used in your car needs wires to get from the battery to all the devices you operate.

But the wires are just one of many things that need to be rated for the devise you will be operating. You will have a switch for turn on and off the devise. A fuse is for protecting the wire from damaging your car if the load is higher then the switch or wire can handle. Some times a relay is used if the load is higher then the fuse or switch can operate.

So now that you are confused I can shed some fleas on the problem, The biggest thing I see is that the ground is not installed right, yes the ground wire that hooks to the car frame. When cars where first made in the 1920 they used the car body as ground to save money on wire and half the labor to install (1 wire) for each device, Now it's 2005 and you wired your race car that way and your fuel pump and fans don't work right and you keep burning up switches and blowing fuses and you can't find any shorted wires but it keeps on doing it and you lose the race.

Back to the wires when power from the battery go's to the switch then to the device you turn on ( fuel pump - fan etc. ) it has to get back to the battery ground to make it work, but if you put anything in the path that is not able to handle the load before or after it you can make the fuse blow. Yes I barked at you about bad grounds can blow a fuses. All the power needed to operate your fuel pump and fan has to start at the battery and end at the battery so anything that slows down the power will give you an itch you can't scratch. So the best way not to have problems is to make sure you have the shortest path from battery to the fuel pump and back to the battery that's where relays come in they are remote switches it's by your pump and needs a small amount current (the power that makes things work) to operate and can switch high current like fuel pumps and fans.

So now we have the shortest route from battery to fuse to relay to pump back to battery with wire sized for the current draw of your pump. The best way to size your wire is to go one size bigger than they supplied under 6 feet,Two sizes bigger over 6 feet. The fuse is there to keep high current draw like a shorted wire that rubbed through on sharp piece metal or your pump that shorted out from heat. That's the only need for a fuse to stop the fire when the wire gets to hot from to much current. Now the switch that's mounted by the dash only has to power the relay at 1/4 of a amp draw less then a small light bulb that means very small wires and switches can operate fuel pumps and fans.

Now back to grounds if the power goes through a wire to your pump it has to go through the ground wire to the battery not the car frame, rust that you can't see and steel is not as good a wire as copper. Now this wags my tale, if you have copper wire on your fuel pumps power supply and you hook the ground to the frame what ever is lost in going through steel is felt in the pump because it's like a hose if you stand on one end, the water only flows the amount that get by your foot. So no matter where you put your foot the flow slows down. It's the same with wiring your car, if you slow it down by using steel as your ground, it makes it harder to operate and can blow the fuse and not having a shorted wire, you can slow down your pump making it work hotter and then burn up."

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Last edited by Plumb Wired; 01/21/13 11:52 PM.

RIP Monte Smith

aka: OutlawFish
'98 Bickel Dodge Dakota PST