OK so the remote battery box is in, the power cable is ran.  I am just trying to decide on the ground distribution.

               I know I am going to have a small army of grounds in the rear of the car.  Just not sure what I want to do between the battery and the rear.  Should I just drill and tap a hole into the front cross member and call it good, or should I run a large ground cable all the way to the back of the car and bolt a ground to the engine directly.  I know I won't have to go mega insulated on the ground wire which will make running the cable fairly easy.  If I do run the cable it'll just be ran down the opposite side of the fuel tank as the power cable.  I even tossed the idea of running the ground cable back, and around the firewall area, putting a T into the cable, and running another dedicated ground wire into the cabin for the Amp for the Stereo.  The car is going to have a pretty hefty power drain on it with the 1.5kw peak, 750 sustained inverter, 11 speaker sound system with at least 1 amp if not 2, twin "Knight Rider" light bars in the nose, fog/driving lights in the nose, 110w Ultra White H4 conversion bulbs, and probably a half dozen other items like cell phone chargers, laptops, GMRS radio charging station and maybe even at a later date a 7" Touchscreen LCD ran from a small older laptop under the dash to power a multimedia system in the car.  

      Then on top of it all, the trailer hitch will be moved to this car, so I will have a full set of trailer lights to contend with.  (Also thinking a really cool idea would be to install notchback tail lights below the trailer deck, and using a factory harness extended up to the Fiero. Which would add an extra 8 bulbs plus the 4 side marker lights I am adding to the trailer. 

       Thanks for the heads up. 

Jeez, hate to disagree, but I HATE body grouds. They corode, have point on them initially which you have to get rid of, so they corode....

Insulation is a non issue. The more contsct the better! You could use 2/0 bare and that would be great, but

If it were me I'd do it all...meaning:

1) Battery (-) to body with 2/0 (Read as 2 ought) copper...welding cable works great

2)A second 2/0 copper to the engine block. The starter grounds through the block (Head) and the better a connection you can get there the better off you are. Apply noox to the connections so you don't get corosion

For high load compenents which are connected together by other signal wires (Ie.head unit to amps) use as heavy a wire as you're comfortable with (I use #10 min for amps/head units), hook all the components' grounds together, then run directly to one of the low impedance connections you just made above. This will avoid ground voltage rise feedback issues. This is what happens when say, the amp sends out a bunch of current and the ground voltage rises slightly with respect to the head unit, causing the amp input to see it as a signal rise from the head unit, leading to painfull subwoofer blowing oscillations.

Can you get away with a properly done body ground...yup. Would I?No way!

1.5kW peak rms = 2121 peak watts = 155.97Apeak @ 13.6V. Cool.

Chay

              Well I have spoke a few people over the phone and the both of you on here.   

The car guys say, frame ground it and call it good.

The Stereo guys say, ground all the way back to the engine and then go from Engine to plus battery to a dist block separately for amp power and ground. 

I have about 30ft of 3/0 welding cable left and 1/2 dozen ends. 

I have decided to,

 3/0 cable ground from battery to engine block

 AND

3/0 battery to front cross member.

Then run 1/0 from engine to chassie,

This should tie everything in really well.   I'll probably also run dedicated power and ground wires from the battery into the cabin for the Amp.  I am actually going to tie the amp power in AFTER the batter kill switch, so in the event of a catastrophic failure, I can kill the switch and kill the entire electrical system in the car. 

Sounds like a good setup to me.

I like the idea of having a single shutdown switch like a race car.

GM normally does this kinda stuff with fusable links. The idea of this is to keep the protective element (Fuse or cb) as close to the source as possible.

When you run your feed to your stereo consider the location of the fusing. As close to the distribution block as possible will protect the wires all the way to the radio/amp. I find vibration can be an issue with rubbing off insulation...sure don't want to have a fire because of lack of protetion.

Chay

Chay

Can't remember if it was a general rule of thumb, or just one that  I use, no more than 4" from the positive source there should always be a fuse.  My amp has 4gauge power wire, and a large 60am fuse 2" from the battery connection.    Not being able to fuse the starter wire that is 10ft long under the car is why I went so overboard with the conduit.   I have had a battery positive cable arc direct to ground.  I damn near lost my car over it.   From then on out, everything that COULD have a fuse in it, did.  In many cases, even running 2 fuses, one large oversized fuse near the positive terminal, in case of a dead short in the line, and one smaller 10amp or 15amp fuse at the device itself.  

Ok Ground Cable is made up.   Yes I went a bit overkill.  But at least I won't have to muck with it again.

The hose and hose clamp, are a really short piece of heater hose I slide over the joint between the insulation and the copper lug.  Just to keep any chance of any water getting into the lug.   I actually did too good of a job crimping it, and was unable to fill the lug with solder afterwords.  I ran out of my jumbo shrink tube or I would have used that instead.

It just turned out that heater hose as the same ID as the 3/0 cables OD.  The copper lug will go to the drivers side, firewall side head.  The other end goes to the battery up front then the red cable. (I know it should have been black but I did not have any black, I'll put some black plastic conduit over it later) goes to the chassie some place close to the front of the car.  All in all this should be damn near bullet proof.  The red cable is just 1 gauge. 

Then in a hurrey I forgot to add the pic links.