Pictures of where you have grounded your amps

[mayme]

Can you please show me where to ground my amp without drilling a hole

Thanks

[Knight Rider]

No pictures but there's a grounding point just below the near side light cluster right in the corner on the floor of the boot

[mayme]

Thanks I will have a look

[john norris]

I have my amp and capacitor hidden in the cubby hole in the boot same one where the fuses ect and earthed to the earth point there

[BigWilko]

I grounded mine to the back seat bolt in the siggy. Not sure on the access on the vec though.

[rozzer2006]

earthed mine on the rear cluster bolt, works fine.

[marc vectra sri]

Took the left hand side carpet out and there's a earth point in there

[Z80]

I used a seatbelt bolt in the old Laguna, but I did it differently in the Vectra.

When the amps rack will be finished, it will occupy the whole left side fender. I wanted it to be removable quickly in case the REC have to be maintained (or just to get access to the tail lights - the right side will be occupied by the subwoofer enclosure, so same deal, except there's just a pair of speaker wires there). The racks will actually be folding using hinges along the floor, but in case they have to be completely removed, I wanted a quick and clean way to disconnect the amps from the power supply, and above all, I didn't want to keep a live wire hanging around.

Of course, I have a 100 Amps electromagnetic fast circuit breaker by the battery, but I wanted an easy way to disconnect the live power from the boot without powering off from the battery (my Alpine head unit is also powered after the main circuit breaker, and having to reprogram all the the stuff each time isn't that pleasant).

So I thought about something allowing me to :

- Have the main power (both +12 V and ground) supply available from a fixed location ;

- Be able to quickly power down from the boot ;

- Have a way to easily disconnect the whole amps and audio processor rack and take it off.

So this is my solution :



I manage to fit a 100 Amps watertight (marine) circuit breaker in a standard home electric box for a standard switch and fitted a watertight transparent spring loaded cover above it.

The main power wire (2 AWG / 35 mm²) comes from the left side on the picture, to the circuit breaker input on the top left terminal, the output is on the rigth side (bottom right terminal), using stainless steel 10 mm bolts and nuts, and grower washers.

The bottom left and top right holes in the circuit breaker are free, so as you can see, I used the top right one to bolt all the stuff to the car body : the protective box, the circuit breaker body... And the ground wire.

There's an existing hole there : I just had to scrape the paint, tighten a bolt to the wall with a first nut, then fit the box and ground wire with another nut : job done.

To release the right side wires, I just have to loosen the nuts and get the wires out, as I used forked connectors.

Now I'm not completly pleased with the need to use a pipe wrench to untighten the nuts. I finally got Anderson connectors and I'll replace the crimped forked connectors (it was a temporary solution anyway) with soldered industrial ring terminals (as for the battery side), that will be permanently bolted to the circuit breaker, and disconnection will be a lot easier by just unplugging the Anderson connectors.

Actually, I just disn't know they existed at the time I wired the Vectra... And usual car audio fast disconnect devices are unable to bear high currents.

[rozzer2006]

the forlift in my work uses that connector

[MiniVauxhall]

Our golf buggs at work use the red one's (think there around £20 a pair), and the forklift use's the anderson blue 160amp connectors, hate to know what they cost.